


Under Every Sky

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Sibling Incest, Wincestiel - Freeform, very post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:18:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is used to a life of travel, Baby's easy gait and the solid reality of Dean in the saddle in front of him. Then a star falls from the sky,  a stranger with a story of another reality where all the nightmares still live. </p>
<p>OR </p>
<p>What happened when Metatron missed. </p>
<p>Written for the 2013 Wincestiel Big Bang</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Every Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to featheredschist for a great beta. 
> 
> Check out Paxdracona's master art post here: http://paxdracona.livejournal.com/10728.html

__

_Mary Mary, quite contrary, sang the devil to sleep_

_she closed down hell, ending it all for keeps_

_She burned and burned from skin to bone_

_and how her husband weeps!_

 

"Sammy!"  

“What?” Sam woke instantly, arms tightening around Dean’s waist. It was evening, the sky a bruised purple and the tall grasses waving dark hands around Baby’s hooves.  

“You were kicking up a fuss in your sleep again,” Dean sighed, the expansion and collapse of his ribcage well-known sensations against Sam’s chest.  “Think you drooled on me.”

“Didn’t,” Sam denied, even as he swiped a wet spot from the corner of his mouth. He knew there’d be a matching one on Dean’s shoulder, seeping through sun bleached cotton. “Where are we?”

“Halfway to nowhere,” Dean brought Baby down to a slow walk. “There’s a clear spot up ahead. Figured we could make camp.”

Sam nodded, pressed his forehead to the back of Dean’s neck. It was cool out, the last blow from the freak thunderstorm that has chased them most of the morning. Dean’s skin always held the warmth of the sun under it though, soothing away the chill. The dream lingered, smoky at the edges as Dean found a spot he approved of and they dismounted.

They could make camp half out of their minds with fever and blindfolded after all these years. By silent agreement, they didn’t bother pitching the tent. The sky was clear and still warm enough to sleep under the blanket of stars. Sam made their bed, Dean started in on a small fire and dinner warmed over it. They ate the last of the venison cooked with the onion grass Sam had picked the day before.

“Take your boots off,” Sam demanded when Dean tried to get between the blankets.

“What if something crawls into them, huh? You want me to die of a snake bite cause you’re too damn tidy?”  But Dean took them off, knowing Sam would shake them out for him in the morning. The argument was really just another ritual holding their tenuous lives together. “What were you dreaming about before?”

“Same as always.”  

“Figured,” Dean put his hand into Sam’s hair, his lips on Sam’s forehead as if he could draw the poison out.

“S’over,” Sam said more for himself than for Dean.

“Long over,” Dean agreed, brushing Sam’s hair back. “Go back to sleep, yah big infant.”

Sam didn’t sleep. He turned onto his back, watching the glittering trail of the Milky Way. He pointed out Orion to Dean.

“Who taught you where he was in the first place?” Dean grumbled, but he looked and traced Ursa Major for Sam in return.

They spent most of their nights under the ceiling of open air. The stars were their companions in childhood, familiar as loyal friends. Dean had made up constellations at first until Sam started demanding facts. It was Bobby who found a book, buried in a caved in library. The book’s spine had been damaged, but each glossy page with bright silver and blue illustrations remained. They still carried it in one of their saddlebags, a guidebook to the only land that never shifted below their feet.

“I wish we could build a house right here,” Sam muttered sleepily. “Wood beams and thatch roof to keep off the rain.”

“Why here?” Dean snorted. “Why anywhere? We can call the whole world home, Sammy. Who else can do that?”

“It’s just...” But Sam stopped as he always did. He knew why Dean didn’t want walls. Knew why it was easier to walk on from one town to the next, peddling salt and knowledge to keep the remaining few alive.  

Dean’s eyes drooped closed, his hand idly stroking through Sam’s hair. They would have fallen asleep just like that if the sky hadn’t suddenly lit up in flames.

“What the hell?” Dean was on his feet in an instant, revolver in one hand, knife in the other. Sam was slower, sitting up and looking skyward.

“It’s a meteor,” he laughed. “Relax-”

The meteor kept falling, closer and closer, lighting the world up silver and gold. It impacted in the distance, so hard that the ground shook under their feet.

“Goddamn.” Dean pulled on his boots.

“We’re going to go look for it, right?” Sam asked, already scrambling to put their bedroll back together.

“Yeah, of course,” Dean resaddled Baby, whispering apologies into her twitching ear.

Not that she cared. The mare was twenty years old if she was a day, still spry as a colt, even carrying two full grown men for miles. No one knew what John had poured all over her, some said that he did things to her mother, talking spellwork right into the womb. Whatever the case, a few more miles in a cool night were nothing to her. Nor was a little thing like the earth shaking apart under her hooves going to throw her.

The acrid smell of fire led them on and Sam tried not to gag. He could stand a little campfire here and there, but something about a real blaze always turned his stomach. Dean rested a hand over Sam’s where it lay on his belly, but said nothing.

The crater wasn’t hard to find. Twenty feet across at least with the ground still smoking. Sam dismounted first, drew a bandanna over his mouth and nose. Dean was more cautious, finger on the trigger as they started down the side.

Huddled in the middle of the impact was a fluttering sheet of cloth, burned at the edges.

“That’s not a lump of space rock,” Dean huffed.

“Is it alive?” Sam moved in closer, ignoring Dean’s soft noise of warning. “Hello?”

The fabric shifted, rolled. A man, face covered in soot, stared up at Sam.

“You okay, man?”

“No, Sam,” the man coughed. “Nothing is okay.”

Then his eyes closed and he passed out.

“He knew your name.” Dean said grimly. “I don’t like it.”  

“Yeah.” Sam shivered and reached out tentatively, running his fingers over the singed cuff of the man’s shirt. “This is old stuff.”

“Doesn’t look old. Just burnt.” Dean toed at the guy’s thigh.

“Not what I meant. Like Before stuff.”

“No way.” Dean squatted down, looked closer. “Huh. Yeah, look at this cloth. Maybe he’s from one of the bigger raiding collectives. They’ve kept stuff for years in decent shape.”

“Twenty years and it looks nearly new?” Sam shook his head. “Something is seriously weird here.”

“Dude crash landed from the sky and you’re just putting that together? Hey, maybe he’s an alien.” Dean winked. “Come to bring you back home.”

“Ha ha.” Sam got an arm under the man, watched his head roll limply.

“What’re you doing?”

“Getting him out of here for one. I’ve got questions for him when he wakes back up.”

They took turns sleeping that night, keeping an eye on their starman. Sam dreamed of fire and ice, thrashing until Dean woke him again.

“Twice in a day?” Dean’s thumb ran circles over Sam’s cheek.

“It means something.” Sam turned on his side, wrapped himself around Dean’s sitting form. “I just don’t know what.”

They ate beans for breakfast and wiped their hands clean on a dampened handkerchief. Dean claimed there was a river a few miles away and he was always good with water, so Sam washed his face too, wincing at the smudges of ash that came away.

“Ohhhhh...” The starman groaned, eyes fluttering open again. In the prairie dawn they were almost illicitly blue as if to rival the sky he’d descended from.

“Hey, back with us?” Sam stayed a few feet away.

“Where are we?” The starman asked.

“Middle of the Open Spaces,” Dean shrugged when Sam glanced at him. “Best I can guess. Near Oaker’s Claim, maybe?”

“I don’t know those places,” The starman sat up slowly. “Your hair has grown, Sam.”

“Hair does that,” he kept it back in a ponytail to keep it from whipping around Dean’s face on a windy day, but he couldn’t bring himself to chop it all off like Dean did. The heavy weight between his shoulder blades reassured him. He’d worn it like that for a decade or more now. There was no one left alive, but Dean who should be able to remember it cropped close.

“Why do you have a horse?”

“How else do you think we should get around?” Dean strode forward, a little ahead of Sam, his hand resting on his gun.

“I see,” the starman looked around, glanced up at the sun then back to them. “What year is this?”

“28,” Dean frowned. “You get hit on the head in that crash or something?”

“28,” the starman repeated. “You use an alternate numbering system. Twenty-eight years since what?”

“Fuck,” Dean groaned.  

“Twenty-eight years since the lights went out,” Sam offered. “Twenty-eight years since everything closed up and the world started dying. Any of that ringing a bell?”

“It’s not....How?” The starman frowned, looked back up at the sky. “He missed.”

“Who missed what? Your alien overlord get pissed and spank you or what?” Dean demanded.

“I’m not from this reality.” The starman looked them over, weighing them. “Where I’m from, we've tried to close Hell and our efforts failed. Sam would have given his life to do it and Dean never would have allowed it. Or so I assume...”

“Are we buying this?” Dean muttered to Sam.

“I think we have to. No reason he’d know our names. And shit, we’ve seen weirder.”

“Or he’s crazy.”

“Or that,” Sam agreed. “What’s your name then?”

“Ah,” there was a wounded flash across the man’s face, deep and an acre wide. “My name is Castiel and I’m an angel of the-. No. I was...It doesn’t matter. Cas. You should call me Cas.”

“Cas.” Dean repeated, glancing at Sam. “So you’re an angel.”

“I was.”  

“So they never locked up Heaven where you were from?”  

“No. The attempt was made at the same time, but-” Cas shuddered. “We lost. I’m human now for all intents and purposes.”

“I’m not sure if that’s better or worse,” Dean rubbed at the back of his neck. “A world filled with devils and winged asses or this one.”

“I don’t know,” Cas said bleakly. “But I know which one I’m meant to be in. Dean will think I’ve abandoned him or worse.”

Neither Winchester knew what to say to that. Sam gave Cas the last of the beans, gone cold in their distraction. He ate with a mechanical disinterest while the brothers had a hushed conference a few feet away.

“Even if what he said is true, he’s just a regular guy now. Not an angel,” Dean kept glancing back over his shoulder, itchy with nerves. “Right?”

“You know as much as I do, man,” Sam shrugged. “But even if he is just a guy from somewhere else with an impossible ability to survive a sky hall fall and a case of the crazies,  we can’t abandon him. He won’t know the first thing about surviving.”

“You’re always an easy case,” Dean chided, but didn’t disagree. It was easier to let Sam be soft and take the credit, protecting Dean’s more fragile heart. They’d never discussed it, but they worked best that way. 

“You can stay with us,” Dean announced as if they were offering more than trudging alongside an unusual horse with limited food and no real destination.  

“Thank you,” Cas closed his eyes. “I....thank you.”  

Without any reason to stay, they saddled up Baby. Dean rode and Sam walked beside Castiel. When Dean rode ahead to ascertain the distance to the river, Sam had to ask,

“Were our parents alive there?”

“No,” Castiel glanced over at him. “Your mother died when you were young. Your father when you were twenty-four.”

“What was he like?”

“I never met John Winchester,” he hesitated. “I believe that he was a righteous man.”

“That sounds right,” Sam watched a rabbit skitter by. His gun stayed in its holster. He wanted information more than he wanted meat. “How did our mother die?”

“She made a deal with a demon to save John’s life,” Castiel tilted his head up to the heavens. “That’s what began all of it. The terror, the death, all the bad decisions.... one woman saving one man because she loved him.”

“I don’t know if that’s better or worse.”

“Then what?”

“Then it all happened because he couldn’t live without her.”

Baby thudded back through the grass, carrying Dean with a wide smile.

“It’s the Mississipi! Ha! I knew we were close to the river. You wanna follow her down, Sam? Go all the way to the Gulf like we did a few years back, remember?”

“I remember,” Sam smiled back, unable to stop himself. That had been one of the good times, enough towns in between long stretches of just the two of them. They’d had plenty to eat and stayed on the shore of the Gulf for weeks until even crawfish and warm water couldn’t sooth Dean’s itchy feet anymore.  

“What’s at the Gulf?” Castiel looked between them.

“Sun and food,” Dean shrugged. “What else do you need?”

“So you just travel? Without purpose?”

“We work as we go,” Dean’s joy dimmed a fraction.

“We do what we can.”

“But you hunt things?” Castiel asked, an edge of desperation there. “You protect people.”

“Ha...wouldn’t that be something?” Dean’s smile died, the horse gone still as rock beneath him.  

“We do our part,” Sam edged toward Baby. “We help when we can.”

They walked on with the rush of the river and Dean’s uneasy humming filling the silence. The rocky rise and fall of melody always unnerved Sam. Dean needed to be calm or Sam’s flesh unmoored from the bone.  

The tension propelled Sam forward and he nearly dived into the water to escape. He stopped himself at the last moment, not looking forward to a day spent in damp clothes. Instead, he splashed water on his face and the back of his neck, then filled up their biggest pot. The water would have to be boiled before drinking it.

Dean sat down beside him, water glistening in his hair.

“It’s not his fault that he doesn’t know,” Sam said quietly.

“Guess I just wish I had the same luxury,” Dean knocked his shoulder in Sam’s. “Us as real hunters. Dad would have had a fit.”

“But Mom would’ve been proud,” Sam watched a fish shimmer by. “Wouldn’t she?”

“Maybe.”

How could Dean know any better than Sam? Seven year olds weren’t known for their deep character assessments. When they were younger, Sam had been jealous about how much time Dean had had with their parents. Only recently had it occurred to him that it could be just as bitter knowing only the smallest slice. A remembrance of better times that soured what good they could scrounge up.

At least Sam had Dean. He reached out, laced his hand into Dean’s willing fingers. His was the bigger of the two, big enough to enclose the whole of Dean’s calloused hand. It comforted him just the same.

“I’m sorry if I brought up something painful,” Castiel crouched down beside them.

“Not painful,” Dean squeezed Sam’s hand quickly before pulling away. “Just used to everyone knowing. I’ll get a fire started, clean up the water. We’ll find a living town if we keep following the river.”

“I wouldn’t mind a night in a real bed,” Sam skipped a rock over the top of the water.

“Or a drink with more kick to it.” Dean agreed.

“Why a living town?” Castiel asked, eyes on Sam.

“Why would we stop in a dead one?”

Castiel didn’t ask another question. Instead he cast his gaze over the river, touching the dried clay of the bank.

“I’ve been here before,” Castiel said, seemingly to himself. “And I’ll get back again.”

“Faith won’t do you much good here,” Sam pushed himself upward. “God left us behind a long time ago.”

Water boiled, cooled and distilled into their myriad canteens and bladders, Sam took his turn riding. It was strange to ride alone. He was too used to resting against the strong line of Dean’s back. The reins settled oddly into his hands.

“What did we ride if it wasn’t horses in this other place?” Dean asked, one hand trailing affectionately over Baby’s flank.

“Cars. A black Chevy in your case,” Castiel’s shoulders hunched. “Dean loves that car.”

“I’d love any damn thing with a motor,” Dean laughed. “Can you imagine that Sam?”

“Where would we drive it?” He rolled his eyes. “Unless it was one of those tough military things that Bobby was always working at.”

“Eh, you’ve got no imagination.”

Sam had plenty of imagination actually. Too much sometimes. He could see a long black road unbroken by rubble and rusted out hunks of metal. He could imagine sitting beside Dean instead of behind him. Would they leave the windows down to catch the wind? Would they miss the sun warming the crowns of their heads?  

“She’s a good horse,” Castiel stared out over the plains.  

“Wouldn’t trade her for a thousand cars,” Dean agreed. “Might give Sam over for one though.”

“You’d have no idea what to do without me,” Sam reached down and snatched Dean’s hat off his head.  

“Hey!” Dean jumped up and snatched it back, his hand landing briefly on Sam’s thigh. “I did just fine when you were too young to do anything useful.”

“Sure. Twenty years ago. When the hardest thing you had to do was tie your own boots. Oh, wait...”

“Shut it,” Dean swatted at him with the hat, a faint blush rising. “I figured it out soon enough.”

“Sure.” Tenderness rushed through him and Sam left the teasing behind in the dust. “How far you want to go today if we don’t see life?”

“Dunno. Near to sun down, I guess. No use traveling in the dark.”

It so happened that Sam spotted a plume of smoke just after lunch. Dean was riding by then, but Sam had walked ahead to find a private place to piss. He watched the smoke with a familiar uneasiness. Civilization wasn’t his or Dean’s favorite, but it was a necessary evil. At least they wouldn’t be sleeping rough the first night with their new companion.  

“Got a town coming,” he said when Dean and Castiel caught up. “Blue smoke going up.”

“So we’re needed then,” Dean sighed. “All right. Suppose we shouldn’t put it off.”  

“They know you’re coming?” Castiel asked.

“They know a Salter will be by eventually,” Dean shrugged.

“Salter,” Castiel repeated.

“Salt, burn and get out alive,” Sam smiled weakly. “Something of a motto.”

They passed by ruins on the way. Some thoughtful citizen had burned them to the ground, probably years ago judging by the growth pushing through the skeletons of dead buildings. A flutter of yellow tape survived though, clinging doggedly to the outskirts ‘Quarantine’ they once blared, but now only whispered the black lettering faded to grey.

“Croatoan,” Castiel stopped dead, staring.  

“I haven’t heard anyone call it that in years,” Pulling Baby around, Dean followed Castiel’s gaze.

“What do they call it?”

“Just the Plague.”

Sam didn’t look. Couldn’t look. When they were kids, they had spent their afternoon clamoring through ruins just like it. Until Sam had stumbled on a jumbled mess of human remains, a fractured jaw bone crunching under his foot. He hadn’t screamed, Dean claimed. Just frozen like a deer and Dean had had to pick him up and carry him away.

There’d been no time to bury anyone, Bobby explained as he drew Sam to him, no time to treat a body with dignity. And now there weren’t enough hands to dig all those thousands of graves.    

“Where I came from, we stopped this,” Castiel swallowed. “How many?”

“Most of them.” Dean turned Baby back toward the living town.

“Most of us.” Sam corrected and he could feel Castiel’s eyes on the back of his neck all the way into the town.

It had probably been a bigger place once. They found evidence of  more ruins that might have been strip malls or houses. Sam could never tell the difference and Dean hated speculating.  The smoke drifted toward them as they got closer, blue against the greying sky. The inhabited part of the town was one street long, a cluster of shabby buildings around a dried out fountain. A young woman sat by the fire, her hair raining blood orange around her shoulders.

“Evening,” Dean tilted his head towards her.

“Good. You’re here,” she stood on bare feet that looked too pale and vulnerable against the broken concrete. “We’ve been keeping vigil for three weeks waiting for one of you to roll through.”

“Could’ve sent word.”

“Could’ve,” she agreed. “But Daddy says that’s as good as inviting you in.”

Sam rubbed wearily at his face.  

“We’re here now,” Dean said, keeping his tone friendly. “We’ll take our ounce of flesh, do our work and be on our way.”

“Your table’s there,” she pointed at a building that still had half the letters of ‘Applebee’s’ stuck to the outside and a newer hand painted sign that read ‘Jenny’s’ underneath. Then she poured water over the fire and the smoke blinded them all.

The inside of Jenny’s held a well stocked bar and enough chairs to seat the entire town. A woman that might’ve been Jenny herself appeared to be behind the bar. She must’ve been the girl’s mother with the red of her hair and the turn of her nose.

“Salters.” She studied them. “I’ve got venison and green beans, pretty fresh. That do you for dinner?”

“If we could wash it down with something,” Dean agreed amiably while Sam clocked the place for exits and entrances, threats from any of the few patrons slumped exhausted in their chairs.

“Liquor we’ve got plenty of. I can spare you a few tumblers of whatever you like. No beer though.”

“That’s fine,” Dean gave her a good smile, the charming boyish one instead of the sleazy young man he sometimes tried on to lesser success.

She nodded once sharply, barked an order at some unseen kitchen hand, then gestured them into the booth closest to the door. No one had sat in it for a while. Sam had to brush away the dust off his side. Castiel hesitated before cramming in next to Dean. Someone had carved ‘The Quick and the Dead’ into the lacquered wood with a knife.

“Shit,” Dean ran his thumb over the words.  

“I know the reference,” Castiel watched Dean’s thumb, a little dazed. “Why does it bother you?”

“It’s what we say to all Salters,” A man with a long beard slapped down three glasses of whiskey. “Especially the likes of you.”

“There’s no one left to judge us,” Dean took up his glass.

“It’s possible were neither anyway,” Sam said quickly before the man could respond. “I mean who’s to say what’s living or dead these days?”

“I feel alive most mornings.” Slamming back the whiskey, Dean grinned at Sam. “Except when you haven’t washed your feet.”

“Sometimes I go to sleep close to death thanks to your breath, so it’s really only fair.” Sam drank with his glass tilted in salute.

“Fast talking pieces of shit,” The man mumbled, but shuffled away.

“Could’ve let me slug ‘em,” Dean said quietly.

“Nah,” Sam leaned back, tangling their legs together where no one could see. “Need you to see through both eyes tomorrow.”

“Like that old guy could’ve landed a punch.”

“Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead,” intoned Castiel. “I don’t understand.”

“They need us, but they hate us.” Dean shrugged. “What’s to understand?”

When  Dean got up to go the bathroom, shoulders hunched against the daggers of stares, Sam took pity,

“They blame us.”  

“For what?”

“For all of it,” Sam smiled bitterly.

After they ate, Jenny led them through a few doors and pointed to two bedrooms with, “fresh sheets and a clean enough bathroom between them”.  Castiel hesitated in the doorframe of one room, glancing back over them. He looked utterly alone just then, a curved spine and heavy dark circles under his eyes.

“We’ll wake you in the morning for breakfast,” Sam assured him. “Okay?”

“Thank you, Sam,” Castiel said gravely, then closed the door firmly behind him.

Dean was already sitting on the bed, stripped down to undershirt and boxers, hands rubbing over his face in fatigue. Sam slid in beside him, resting his chin on Dean’s shoulder.  

“Do you think he really was an angel?” Dean asked at last.

“I don’t know,” Sam slipped an arm around Dean’s waist. “Maybe.”

“He knows a lot about us.”

“Yeah.”

“But not really.”

“Mhm,” Sam waited while Dean turned everything over. While he waited he scrubbed his cheek against Dean’s, the catch of their stubble satisfying some deep itch.

“Lazy cat,” Dean laughed, reached up and caught the back of Sam’s neck. “I guess I feel bad for the guy.”

“Me too,” Sam sighed. “He looks lost.”

“Well, not like we know anything about that.”

“Right,” Sam huffed a laugh. “Hard to be lost when you’re not headed anywhere particular.”

“Mhm,” turning fractionally, Dean glanced a kiss off Sam’s jaw. “Wanna? Haven’t had a bed in a while.”

“Yeah,” Sam’s blood heated in a flash.

They tumbled over each other onto the mattress until they were both laughing and Dean’s fingers were mashed into Sam’s hair. Kissing turned from playful to serious business in an instant, Dean holding Sam in place. Their lips dragged together, wet and messy. Sam bent his legs, letting Dean settle between them until the hardlines of their erections came together.

“Gotta be quiet,” Dean murmured, wicked smile crawling upward. “Can you be quiet for me, Sammy?”

“Yes.” Sam tilted his up his chin in a silent plea. Dean obliged him, nipping at the lean line of Sam’s neck. They reverted every time they did this, casting backwards for the boys they had been when it began.

“Good,” Dean’s hands traveled downward, making quick work of Sam’s shirt and pushing greedily over the exposed planes of stomach and chest. “How do you even get so tan?”

“The sun,” Sam rolled his eyes then gasped when Dean retaliated with harsher bite. “Fuck.”

“Smart ass.”  

They took their time getting naked, enjoying the luxury of it. That kind of vulnerability  in the middle of the wilderness never appealed to them, but here in the relative safety of shelter they could enjoy the slow slide of skin against skin.  

When they were finally free of encumberence, Dean held their cocks together in his hand. He didn’t do anything, just held and looked as if it was still marvelous and new to him.

“You should fuck me,” Sam suggested with a wanton arch of his hips.

“What’s the magic word?” Dean growled, but he was already reaching down into one of their bags.

“Please,” Sam gave it every husky, wanting note he had and Dean’s search for their bottle of lube. The expiration date stamped on the plastic had passed a frighteningly long time ago, but it worked as advertised. When Dean had discovered it in a decaying Walgreens, they’d gotten hot just reading the label.

“On your stomach.” Dean commanded and Sam scrambled to comply so fast that the sheets skidded under his knees. He hummed happily as Dean stroked possessively down his spine and cupped his ass firmly in both hands. “Goddamn. You look...damn.”

“Same way I always look,” Sam muttered, grateful for the pillow for swallowing his flushed skin.

“Always look good,” Dean agreed, before thumbing Sam’s cheeks apart and blowing a little on his twitching hole.

“Dean!” Sam half-laughed, half-groaned.

“What?” He could hear Dean’s smile, felt the shift of his knees on the mattress.  

It took a few minutes for Sam to open up, but Dean never bitched about how slow he had to go. He seemed to enjoy taking his time in a way that would’ve driven Sam crazy if the same had been true in reverse. Dean always went slack and loose after a minute under Sam’s tongue, sparring them both Sam’s quick flare impatience.

Tonight though, Dean seemed even more willing than usual to draw things out. He only added a second finger when Sam started cursing in dead languages and even then he moved with such deliberate slowness that Sam couldn’t tell where the pleasure ended and he began.

“Dean,” He repeated helplessly, thrusting mindlessly against the sheets. “Dean...”

“I’ve got you,” Dean said roughly. “You gotta be quiet, Sammy.”

“Please...” Sam groaned with none of the artifice of before. “Dean, please, you have to...”

“Okay, Sammy, okay.”

Dean pulled Sam’s hips up, high enough that Sam scrambled to his elbows, hair hanging into his eyes. He bit back a heartfelt moan as Dean finally worked his way inside. If he looked at the right angle, Sam could see Dean’s thighs between his own shaking ones. Sam’s legs were strong, ropey muscle built from a thousand miles of walking and a thousand more of riding. He could run for hours if he had to, but right now he wasn’t sure he could hold himself up for another second.

“Come on,” Dean pushed and pulled, repositioned them onto their sides, one of Sam’s legs thrown wide to accommodate Dean’s steady thrusts. From this angle, Dean could more easily reach Sam’s cock. He worked it in the same languid rhythm beaten out by his hips. Sam lost himself in it. The song of Dean and him together, so strong that sometimes Sam could nearly hear it playing around them. He groaned again as Dean twisted his hand over the head of Sam’s cock.

“Shush,” Dean’s other hand went from passively pinned under Sam’s neck to clapped hard over Sam’s mouth. “Quiet now.”

Sam shuddered, the scent of Dean’s hand filling him up and the rough calluses of his palm scrapping over Sam’s oversensitized lips. It was just too much and he came in an almost painful twitch.

“Fuck...” Dean groaned and all that carefulness died a rollicking, pounding death until Dean could come with a biting groan.

They stayed together, Dean curved around Sam’s back even though they didn’t quite fit together that way any more. He darted barely there kisses over the bridge of Sam’s shoulders and kept his free hand splayed over Sam’s stumbling heart. Guilt used to drive them apart after, Dean moving outward to wallow in his shame. But that was long gone now, too many years of just them and the sprawling sky.

Now they could be peaceful together like this. Sticky and panting and altogether alive. There was no one left that was fit to judge them, really. They made their own morality as best they could and it would always include this.

“Hey,” Sam brushed his hand over Dean’s wrist.

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean rumbled, a last kiss between Sam’s shoulders before he rolled onto his stomach. A position that looked vulnerable, but promised hell to anyone that tried to disturb them. Dean’s knife had a wicked bite.  

Sam didn’t dream and he was pathetically grateful for the darkness. He drifted in and out of sleep, never able to stay under for more than three or four hours at a stretch. Too used to naps slumped over Dean’s back and constant wariness.

He heard the door crack open and tensed waiting for the first blow. They’d been attacked in towns before, usually by some old timer with a grudge or someone more Sam’s age, too young to remember what had been lost, but eager to avenge it anyway.  

Nothing happened. Sam’s skin prickled with awareness of eyes and finally, he stirred and sat up. Castiel stood in the doorway.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” Castiel whispered. They both darted a look at Dean, who slept on. “I meant only to check.”

To take the pulse, to ensure they breathed, the only handholds that Castiel had in this slick and unfamiliar terrain.

“Just bring your blankets in here,” Sam shrugged and gestured to the floor. “Not like we need the space.”

Castiel said nothing, only slipped away. Sam listened to footsteps over old floorboards, suddenly aware of his own nudity. He and Dean had stopped thinking about risk a long time ago. No one out in the world knew who they were, so no one cared what they got up to. But Castiel knew.

Sam wasn’t sure he cared. Ex-angel or not, Castiel was still a stranger. Whatever judgement he might lever could hardly change their minds now. Maybe he and Dean had been like this in that other world too. The idea that they may not be frightened him. He preferred to believe that even without the toxic combination of isolation, orphaning and Sam’s own mad impulses then this, this glorious shining thing they shared, would have drawn breath and survived.

After too many minutes, Castiel returned with a blanket over one shoulder and a pillow drooping from one hand. He set up his pallet beside the bed without a word and under Sam’s gaze, curled small and fell asleep. It was the instant, trusting sort of thing that Sam couldn’t imagine doing with a new acquaintance in a thousand years.

“Who were we?” Sam asked, sotto voce. Dean couldn’t answer, breath catching then releasing in a slow sigh.

A loud, heartfelt: “Fuck!” woke Sam up and he had to smother a laugh.

Apparently in his morning daze, Dean had climbed out of bed and stepped directly onto Castiel’s back, going down in a windmill. The two of them were tangled together in blankets and limbs.  

“What the hell?” Dean demanded.

“It was a sleepover,” Sam said mildly, offering him a hand back up. “You okay, Cas?”

“Fine,” one side of Castiel’s hair had been mashed against his head. “I meant to wake up before either of you and leave before it became a problem.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean grumbled. “You failed.”

“Not his fault you don’t open your eyes until you’ve been awake for an hour,” Sam teased.

“Shut it you.” Dean yawned right in Sam’s face, giving him a noseful of morning breath.

“Ugh.”

“Deserve it. Where was the bathroom again?”

They took turns using the facilities and Sam stayed in the bath long after the water got cold. He never got over the luxury of clean water on command and he’d taken more than one freezing soak just to keep the miracle going. Once he got out though, they had to face another inconvenience.

“You can’t just put these back on,” Dean held up Castiel’s partially burnt clothes. “People will ask questions.”

They probably wouldn’t actually. No one wanted to talk too much to them as if they carried the end of the world just under their skin.  

“They’re all I have,” Castiel grabbed the singed trenchcoat out of Dean’s grasp, the material worried in his fingers the moment he’d grasped it.

“We can fix you up. But you should keep the coat. Might get cold,” Sam declared, cutting a glare at Dean before he protested. Dean’s mouth clacked shut. “We’ve got some old things.”

Unsurprisingly, Dean’s fraying jeans were a better match than anything Sam had to offer. Castiel hitched them over his hips and ran his hands once over the faded denim, eyes half-closed. He had surprisingly long eyelashes, dark on the curve of his cheek. Sam was practically programmed to react to that sort of thing.

“Here.” He blurted and handed over the soft flannel button up. “Um. It was mine, so it might be big, but it’s-”

“It’s fine. Thank you,” Castiel shrugged off his shirt and Sam looked away.

Looked to Dean who was staring so blatantly that he might as well hold up a sign. Interesting. Sam caught Dean’s eye finally and raised an eyebrow. Dean shrugged, a slight flush coming to his cheeks.

“Someone’s making coffee. I can smell it,” Dean announced, heading out of the room. “Get him some socks, Sam.”

“Here,” Sam handed Castiel a pair of grey knit ones. “We can barter you some stuff on our way out of town.”

“You don’t have to,” Castiel took the socks slowly as if they might explode.  

“We don’t,” Sam agreed. “But if you’re with us, then we watch out for you. That’s the rule.”

The rule had never applied to someone else before, but Sam figured it still made sense. Castiel offered up a ghost of a smile and put his socks on. They followed the smell of coffee to Dean where he bent over a plate full of eggs. The woman from the night before frowned over a stove, shoving two more plates onto the table.

“It’s drowned three men already.” She told the table, not looking at any of them. “We tried the usual stuff, but it’s too strong or too smart or something. Can’t get ahold of it one bit.”

“Anyone else die recently?” Sam asked, picking up a forkful of egg.

“No.” She snapped. “Would’ve told you if I knew who it was. Figure it’s just an old one, got all stirred up over something.”

“These men guilty of anything in particular?” Dean asked, mild as you please.

She said nothing.

“We’re not trying to pry into town business,” Sam sighed. “We just want to get the thing that’s hurting your people.”

“None of ‘em were saints,” she said grudgingly. “But I don’t put up with any shit in my town. No murderers, rapists or wifebeaters here. They were all drunks though.”

“Ain’t we all?” Dean saluted her with his cup of coffee.

She didn’t smile, but she did relax a little. Liquor aged well. Food might go bad, clothes might start to rot, but they could count on whiskey still being whiskey no matter how many years ticked by. Given that and the situation...well. There was no such thing as A.A. anymore.

“What else can you tell us?” Sam coaxed, all little boy wide eyes and softness.  

“Seems sort of random,” she sighed. “Like, it’s just picking who walks close enough.”

“Close enough to what?”

“To the river, I suppose. Like I said, we can’t really tell.”

“That’s good though,” Dean smiled again. “Gives us a place to start.”

Castiel followed them when they left. Sam cleared his throat, had a conversation with Dean entirely in facial tics.

“You don’t have to come,” Dean said to Castiel after a few emphatic frowns.

“I have been on hunts with you both before,” Castiel’s trenchcoat sagged over his shoulders, swallowing him up though it had fit him just fine the day before. “I can do whatever you need me to do.”  

“Can you shoot?” Already Dean was pawing through their provisions.

“Dean, we can’t just-”

“He’s gotta earn his keep somehow.”

“I haven’t handled many firearms, but I can use a blade.” Castiel cut in.

“Here.” Dean set a crowbar into Castiel’s hands. “Blades aren’t much good against ghosts. Iron’ll do okay though.”

“How do you know it’s a ghost?” There was something sure in the way Castiel handled the crowbar, a certain sturdy balance in his hands that unknotted the worry in Sam’s chest.  

“What else would it be?”  The rifle appeared next, passed over to Sam while Dean checked the chambers of the Colt. It was always Dean’s favorite  though it was purely a sentimental artifact now. Sam  could dimly remember their father holding it, fingers white knuckled and shaking.

“Any number of things,” Castiel growled. “Don’t you do your research first?”

“We did our research,” Sam checked over the rifle, ingrained quick movements before setting back out towards the water. “Talked to the woman, got out what she needed to know.”

“There are many beasts that drown things. Sirens for one,” Castiel jogged after them, “some forms of mermaids...”

“He’d get a kick out of Dad’s journal,”  Dean took point, in the casual presumptive way he always did.

“Probably,” Sam shrugged. “It’s just a ghost, Cas. It’s always just a ghost.”

“Not just,” Dean said firmly. “You know that better than anyone. Some of these things are a bitch to deal with or they wouldn’t wait for us to ride into town that’s for damn sure.”

“I don’t understand how you could be so sure.”

Dean and Sam had a quick staring contest. Sam lost. Of course.

“They’re all gone, Cas.” He licked his lips, found a drying flake of skin and chewed at it until came away.

“I understand that Heaven and Hell are closed, so it’s clearly no demon, but there are plenty of things on this earth that don’t take sides.”

“They weren’t given the chance,” copper spilled into Sam’s mouth, drops of blood off his lips. “The world didn’t just end for us.”

“The world hasn’t ended,” Castiel’s grip on the crowbar tightened.

“It did,” Dean smiled grimly. “Twenty-eight years ago. We’re just too stubborn or stupid to die with it.”

There were footprints in the mud of the riverbank. Comings and goings of the town in places. One dark patch of brown on a boulder scattered with flower petals. Squatting down, Sam ran his edges along the splotch.

“Anything?” Dean asked.

“No. Too old.”  

“What-” Cas began.

“Chant it out then, man. I don’t wanna sit around here getting wet socks while you commune with the earth or whatever.”

“You have got to work on your patience,” Sam scolded, grinning as he spread his fingers wider. “You know I get better answers if I do it this way.”

“Saaaaam. Wet socks.”

“Baby.”  

“Ass.” Dean cupped a hand around the back of Sam’s neck. “Get on with it.”

The connection helped, centering Sam’s more than occasionally scattered abilities. He concentrated on Dean’s grip and then spread himself thin into the world. The murder played out among the tiny dramas of natural life, blood spreading below his hands even as a snake caught a mouse a few feet away. The spirit lingered over her kill, long hair spilling into her eyes. She looked sad, her guilt washing over him and pouring bile into his mouth.

The tether was there as it always was. Sam saw them more and more clearly as the years went on. What in childhood had been something he could only feel, now appeared as thick chain that held the souls fast to the flesh. He stood carefully, eyes at once closed and open so he could follow the length of it.

He was dimly aware of Dean and Castiel shuffling behind him, but the world dimmed when he was like this, centering his attention on the etheric plane. He traversed mindlessly over sodden earth until the chain stopped abruptly, sinking downward.

“Here,” he crossed the spot with the toe of his boot.  

“Awesome. Digging.”

They had two short-handled shovels, caked in old dirt, but Dean didn’t bother handing one to Sam. Instead he steered Sam toward a dry patch of dirt and made him sit down.

“I could-”

“We’ve got Cas. Might as well make use of him.”  

Sam was overwhelmingly grateful just then for Cas’ existence. Usually he struggled through the blinding headaches that followed his visions with a shovel in hand or Latin tangled on the tip of his tongue. He couldn’t leave Dean unprotected just because his head hurt. Today though, maybe he could at least catch his breath first.

The shovel went just as easy into Castiel’s hands as the crowbar. He slipped the first few times, trying to gain purchase on the sodden earth. Then he stopped and watched Dean’s movements assessing. After that, it was as if he’d been grave digging all this life.

“Not even a casket,”  reaching into the earth, Dean pulled out a long yellowing femur. “Poor girl, must’ve been one of the later ones. All right, let’s make sure we get all of her or we’ll just be back here tomorrow.”

Sam scrambled to help. He was good at finding all the little pieces, the remainder of his odd vision setting the soil alight in key places. Castiel took all of her fingers bones with surprising tenderness, piling them as neatly as he could beside the larger bones.  

“That all of it?” Dean asked, wiping sweat from his brow and leaving mud behind.

Sam searched the ground and nodded reluctantly, “All of it that the river didn’t take.”

“Best we can do.”  

With care, they poured precious gun powder over the carrion pile. Dean had a faded book of matches, one of a large box. They’d traded four days of dried meat for it and Sam never regretted the gnawing hunger of that week. He could start fires with a spell, but it left him useless for days. The combination of nightmares and weakness drove him half-crazy. Probably why Dean hadn’t protested parting with their supplies either.

“Why doesn’t she come?” Castiel scanned the area for the spirit, holding the crowbar in a defensive stance.

“Why would she?” Dean tossed a handful of salt into the flames. Sam watched them dance, his stomach twisting into knots. He hated this part.

“To prevent this.”

“Sometimes they do. Most of the time though...” Dean sighed. “Guess they just get tired.”

“We’ve had some ugly fights,” Sam hadn’t exactly put aside his rifle, but he knew that this one wouldn’t struggle. Had felt her guilt. “But, yeah. A lot of them don’t seem to care. Or they sort of want to go.”  

She came in a rush of cool wind, stirring the flames that would extinguish her soon. She stared at Sam, anger and guilt and grief welled up in her eyes. He waved. She let out a banshee screech of rage and then winked out of existence.

“Ow,” Dean clapped a hand over one ear. “I hate when they do that.”

A glimmer of light caught Sam’s eye and he whirled quickly, rifle raised. He was ready for another spirit or perhaps a return of the vanquished one.

He didn’t expect it to be Castiel, eyes widened in surprise. Sam wasn’t sure how he’d missed it before. The cut across Castiel’s neck was wide and a voided black that made Sam’s headache pound. The light came from behind him. Sam circled Castiel slowly, the rifle unsteady in his hands.

Through borrowed flannel and tan jacket, they stood out at broken angles. They must’ve been something to see once, mighty and wide. Now they were shattered, hanging limp with clinging feathers charred and frayed. At their base, meat smoked, exposing a network of flesh that could never belong to anything human. It was too complicated, too much and oh god oh god, not for Sam to see...

He barely had time to turn his head before he threw up, his headache redoubling until he went blissfully blind and passed into darkness. Even his faint couldn’t protect him. In the secret silence of his unconscious, his mother burned and burned.

When he came to, the sun had pulled itself all the way up and burned through his eyelids. His head was pillowed on rough, warm denim and he instinctually curled onto his side, pressing his aching forehead into Dean’s stomach.

“Hey,” He mumbled.

“Hey,” Dean dropped a hand into Sam’s hair, relief pouring off of him in waves. “What happened?”

“I looked too close,” he swallowed against the pain. “Cas, okay?”

“Fine. He’s not the one that collapsed. Freaked him out some though. Sent him back to get us something to eat while I waited for your lazy ass to wake up.”

“He really was an angel,” he sat up slowly, leaning heavily against Dean. The bones still smoldered beside them. “I saw them.”

“Saw what?” Dean put a hand to Sam’s back, steadying him.

“His wings,” Sam choked. “Oh God...Dean. They were decimated. Like someone had tried to cut them off. And his throat...someone cut his throat open.”

“Sick,” Dean rubbed slowly, bringing Sam back to him as he always seemed to know how to do. “Guess that confirms that then. He’s got to be human now though. Sweats like one.”

“I think he’s something sort of in between. I don’t think you can make an angel into a human. Not really.” Sam shuddered. “They tried though. Can you imagine? He’s older than...everything. The things he must’ve seen...”

“And yet he hung out with those other Winchesters. Guess he’s got good taste.”  

“An angel, Dean,” Sam opened his eyes, flinching against the light, but needing to see Dean’s face. “We can’t ever tell anyone else. They’d kill him on principle.”

“Who are we going to tell?” Dean laughed hollowly. “Anyway, he’s not one anymore so why bother getting into it?”

“He’s ours to look after, okay?” Sam searched Dean’s face. “We have to do it. Anyone else and they’ll find out eventually somehow. I mean he doesn’t know anything and-”

“He was ours when he crash landed, Sammy. I get it.”

“We’ve never done that before. Just taken someone in-”

“He’s not someone,” Dean shrugged. “He’s important to us...somewhere.”

And that, to Sam’s shock, seemed to settle that. Castiel returned not long after, carrying a cloth bag and Baby following docilely behind him. Their packs had been inexpertly tacked on.

“They kicked us out of town already?” Dean rolled his eyes. “Typical. You shouldn’t’ve told them we’d done the job.”

“I didn’t realize they’d want us to leave so fast.” Castiel looked bewildered. “The woman from the restaurant said there was payment in the bag.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Dean muttered.

“They usually wait until we break out the salt for trade. Must’ve had enough already.” Sam took the bag, pulling out a few decent looking sandwiches and then real pay dirt. “Huh. Well, at least they knew what we needed.”

“What?” Dean peered into the bag and then grinned, discontent erased. “Ammo!”

“Looks new too. Must have a maker in town,” Sam pulled the box free and handed it off to Dean. “That’ll keep us stocked awhile longer.”

They ate quickly and then Dean ordered Sam to mount up. Sam went without arguing for once, eager to let Baby take command of his destination and give into the healing doze that might relieve his headache.

“You too,” Dean turned to Castiel.

“I can walk.”

“Like hell. You might be a stubborn son of a bitch, but I saw your arms shaking by the time we got to the bottom of that grave. Then you walked, what? Three or four miles one way?”

“I’m perfectly capable of walking,” Castiel crossed his arms over his chest.

Sam could almost see the second Dean decided on a new plan.

“If Sam passes out, he’s going to fall right off of her. So you might as well hold him up a little while.”

“Manipulative,” Castiel declared, but he had one foot in the stirrup anyway.

“It’s true.” Sam muttered, making room. Castiel sat uncomfortably between Sam’s legs. He had the same broad shoulders as Dean, but his frame was wiry where Dean’s was built and his hair was soft where Dean’s bristled. “Probably fall asleep on you.”

“That’s fine,” Hesitantly, Castiel put his hand on Sam’s knee. There was no soak of warmth like there was with Dean, only steady pressure. “Why did you get ill?”

“I saw...” Sam touched the filthy cloth over one of Castiel’s shoulder blades. He felt Castiel’s sharp intake of breath. “Does it hurt? It looks like it hurts.”

“There’s nothing physical to feel.”  

“Your throat too. It’s all...raw.”

“I haven’t had time to heal.”

“Can you heal from that kind of thing?”

“I don’t know,” The admittance broke through the air, softly, so softly.  

Sam didn’t actually fall asleep. He couldn’t with a strange body pressed against his. Still, he rested, dozing in and out, listening for the restless beat beat beat of Dean’s shoes in the dirt beside Baby. In the end, it was Castiel who slumped bonelessly backwards and Sam who had to catch up the reins.  

“We must’ve been family,” Dean watched as Sam settled Castiel against him.  

“Or maybe we can afford to trust more easily over there,” Sam tucked the trenchcoat tighter around Castiel’s body, the faint burr of a chill on his skin.   

“Nah,” Dean gave him a half-smile. “Doesn’t sound like us.”

“Probably right,” Sam grinned back, though it made his headache worse.

The river kept them company as they traveled. Castiel woke from his nap with a start and almost fell from Baby. After that he insisted on walking with a grim determination that no one wanted to argue with. Dean mounted up and laughed when Sam instantly slumped against him with a grateful sigh.

“Got up to give my legs a rest, not give my back a work out.” He chided, but Sam ignored him and fell headlong into blissful sleep.

He dreamed...and it was a strange sort of dream. He stood outside of himself, watched his body stretched out in a chair, feet up on a table and a book open in his lap. Dean sat beside him, rubbing at his forehead. They were in the bunker, hazy with half-memories. The last time Sam had been there, he’d been five years old. The walls were buckling and he’d stood outside the entrance, watching as Bobby and Ellen desperately cleared out boxes before the entirety of their home collapsed.

In his dream though, it was perefectly intact.  

_“You sure you’re up for this?” Dean was asking and dream Sam nodded, slow and exhausted._

_“No choice.”_

_Dean frowned down at his book. It was silent for moment and then, “Do you think he’s okay?”_

_“I don’t know,” Dream Sam glanced at Dean then away quickly. “The others seem alright.”_

_“But he’s different,”  The sigh was soft, almost inaudible._

_“Yeah,” Dream Sam scrubbed at his raw eyes._

Sam woke up slowly, in parting stages that left him muddy headed and thick throated. Dean’s right hand rubbed an idle circle over Sam’s knee, familiar and steady where Castiel’s fleeting touch had wavered.

“You’re not sweating bullets,” Dean muttered. “Good sign.”

“Yeah,” Sam set his chin on Dean’s shoulder, looked out over the vast ocean of waving reeds. Out of the corner of his eye, Castiel walked stiff-gaited beside them. “I saw the bunker. Sort of.”

“What bunker?” Castiel’s dead eyed gaze broke from middle distance to land frantic on Sam’s face.

“Used to belong to our father’s people,” Dean shrugged, just with one shoulder so he wouldn’t toss Sam off.  “We lived there the first few years after when things were craziest. Came down after a fucker of a tornado blew right over it.”

“The Men of Letters.”  

“Yeah. Those guys,” Dean wrinkled his nose. “They still kicking on the other side?”

“It’s not another side,” Castiel corrected absently. “It’s one of an infinite universes nested together. It’s too messy to have sides.”

“Right," Dean glanced back at Sam who shrugged. “Sounds like one of your crazy books.”

“Those are science fiction. But yeah, I guess it could be true,” he thought about the bunker and a Dean who sat on the other side of a table instead of right beside Sam. “The other us...Cas, do they live in the bunker?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Is...am I sick there? Really sick?”

“What did you see?” Castiel demanded, then moderated it with a desperate: “Please.”

“Not much. Just that we...they...we’re together. Researching something. They were worried about someone. I think, you?”  The details were already sliding away.

“But they were alive?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re okay?” Dean demanded. “No headache?”

“Not any worse than I had before. It was just a dream. Or well, maybe not just, but it wasn’t like seeing a ghost.”

“Do you think you could make it happen again?” Castiel asked and it was so bereft that Sam wanted to say yes just to erase the grief.

“I don’t know. I didn’t make it happen this time. It’s just something I do.” He glanced up at the cloudy sky, tried to make sense of how far they’d traveled. “I sort of get lost in time. And space now too, I guess.”  

“Why?”

“He always did it,” Dean cut in. “Just one of those alien baby things of his.”

When they made camp that night, Castiel helped build the fire with fumbling hands that hindered more than helped. Dean eventually slipped off to walk the perimeter, warding off any would be predators.

“In the other universe, you have demon blood in your veins. Your mother’s death with Azazel allowed him to poison you in your crib. Later in life, it gave you visions. Usually of terrible things about to happen. There was telekinesis too,” a twig snapped between Castiel’s fingers, splinters raining down into the first hungry licks of flame. “Perhaps here..”

“Mom drank the blood,” Sam kept his eyes on his work, puffing gentle breath to feed the heat. “He tried for her first born, but she refused.”

“So why do you have visions?”

“Because someone had to.”

“What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Sam closed his eyes and pursed his lips. Blew. “That’s what Bobby told me after I got the first one. The world is shattered and beat up, broken, you know? But safer too somehow. Only thing out there hurting people besides people is dead people. Someone had to see them, to help them sleep. So it’s me.”

“But you must want to know what-”

“Of course I do. But I’m probably never going to, so why worry over it?”

“You are not my Sam,” Castiel sat back on his heels.

“Does he belong to you? Over there?”

“No,” Castiel frowned.

“Does Dean?”

Castiel didn’t answer, but that was alright. Sam already knew in the way dream Dean had looked tight around the eyes.

“Got you a rabbit,” Dean crashed out of the brush, landing on his knees next to Sam with a giddy smile. “Son of a bitch ran right by me, almost missed him. Nailed him with a rock, so I didn’t waste a bullet.”

“Nice,” Sam grinned and Dean grinned back, alight with Sam’s approval. “Want me to skin it?”

“Nah, I’ll get it. You get all your medicine man shit ready.”

“Basil isn’t magic.”  

“Then how come it only tastes good if you use it?”

“Because you learned to cook from Bobby and not everything tastes better with a pound of salt.”

“Is Bobby still alive?” Castiel asked and it broke their banter in two.

“No,” Dean’s knife caught the light as he slice downward.

“Eight years ago or close to it,” Sam smiled tightly. “It was stupid. He stepped on a rusted nail. But there haven’t been tetanus shots in a long time.”

“Ellen, pneumonia. Denise, suicide. Jo, gutshot from a rival commune. George, suicide.  Tammy, fell off her horse. Rufus, suicide,” Dean recited with lethal cool. “Anyone else you knew? Because they’re probably dead too.”

“No,” Castiel subsided. “I’m sorry for your losses.”

“Us too.” Sam chanced a look to the stars, but it was cloudy tonight. The moon shone through though, hazy and reliable. “Is he...over there?”

“No. None of them.”

“Guess no matter where Winchesters go, we leave bodies behind,” the first cut of meat landed in the middle of Sam’s beaten pan.

They ate hot herbed rabbit. When Dean and Sam set out their bedroll, Castiel didn’t retreat. He bundled himself at their feet and fell asleep there like an oversized cat.

“That’s just weird.” Dean groaned.

“It’s sad,” Sam contended.

“It can be weird and sad.”

Sam kissed Dean once, twice. Pressed his lips to eyelids and nose.

“I’m glad you’re still alive,” He said softly.

“Shut up, Sammy,” Dean held onto him, fingers digging into Sam’s ribs.  

They followed the river for the next three days. Sam dipped in and out of the water, awake and in dreams. The white rapids followed him down into sleep and kept whatever else might be waiting at bay. Each morning, Castiel would rise from the bedroll at their feet and ask if Sam had seen anything and each morning, Sam shook his head.

By day, Dean and Sam’s routines resettled to include someone else. They bantered and bickered and turned to Castiel for mediation which he rarely provided. They wrestled across the tall grass and pulled Castiel down with them when he strayed too close. Dean made johnnycakes one morning and studded them with wild raspberries that Castiel had found.

“These are good,” Castiel said around a thick mouthful and Dean grinned at the ground.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, licked his lips. “Yeah, they are.”

They didn’t get much time alone, but Sam knew how to talk to Dean in snatches. Conversations they’d had over weeks instead of minutes, dialogues that looped through decades.

“He’s got a thing for you.” Sam warned, knocking on Dean’s boots in the morning to rustle out the imaginary spiders.

“So?” Dean contended, cupping the back of Sam’s neck. “It’s not for me anyway.”

“Guess I’m jealous,” Sam passed Dean a mint leaf, chewing on his own.

“You’re an idiot,” Dean kissed him as the first star winked in the twilight.

Castiel looked at them both too often, talked to them too little and couldn’t be counted on to do mundane tasks without help. Though he was a damn good shot, taking out a coyote with the Colt before Dean or Sam even noticed the damn thing. And when he did talk, he had a wryness that Sam appreciated. And his stare stopped being disconcerting after the first two days.

“Damn,” Sam laughed into the back of Dean’s neck.

“What?” Dean smiled reflexively as he usually did when Sam gave that self-deprecating chuckle.

“Crush.”

“Really?” Dean raised an eyebrow.

“Shut up. It’s just under exposure to humanity or whatever.”

“Huh.” Dean eased a hand onto Sam’s thigh, sensual without seduction. “Me too then.”  

“There’s a town ahead,” Castiel tramped back towards them, dirt smeared high on his forehead. “Partially burned.”

“Dead town,” Dean and Sam chorused.

“I don’t understand what that means,” Castiel said impatiently.

“Probably best just to show you,” Dean squeezed Sam’s thigh as a promise for talk later. “Stay close to Baby though. We haven’t seen a crawler in a few years, but nothing to say there isn’t a stray somewhere.”

They didn’t actually go into whatever town proper had been. Maybe there wasn’t one at all. Sam never could wrap his head around the sprawl of suburbia, how it canted outwards from all the things that actually mattered. Food, drink, company. He’d grown up in the tight community of leftover hunters and Men of Letters, the handful of them scraping the bottom of barrels together.   

The houses stretched outward, disconnected, half of them blackened.

“Not one of the deliberate ones.” Dean kicked at a charred slat of wood, watching it skitter into the debris.

“They burned some places straight the ground.” Sam explained though to him it was abstract knowledge. He knew Dean had seen it happened, watched Lawrence rise up in a wall of flame. According to Dean, Sam had been there too, but he’d only been a toddler, swaddled safe in his big brother’s arms. “To keep it from spreading. It helped in the beginning.”

Castiel stumbled forward, plucked at the faded yellow tape.

“Pestilence,” Dean’s lips curled around the word. “Mom...she thought she could over power the Devil and she did, but she wasn’t fast enough.”

“She tried. We know she tried.” Sam reached for Dean’s hand, twisted at the band of silver around Dean’s index finger. It was John’s, not Mary’s, left behind on a kitchen table without a note. Part of their small inheritance. “Probably no one else could’ve done it at all. Not done it and closed down Hell too.”

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” Dean started then choked and stopped.  

“She did her best,” Sam said firmly.

“Croatoan,” Castiel’s hand dropped back to his side. “Zachariah must’ve- This  _is_ how the world ended.”

“This is how the ending started,” Dean grabbed Sam’s hand, stilling his fingers. “Plague killed...dunno. Fifty percent right off the top?”

“Hard to tell. Reporting got shaky,” Sam reminded him.“ A lot though. Most.”

“Right. Then Dad shut up Heaven.”

“Why would that-” Castiel started.

“You could call it an EMP,” Sam said grimly. “You’d be wrong, but you could call it that. It was like...an automatic failsafe as far as we could tell.”

“If humans ever got smart enough to shut down Heaven, then Heaven would slap us right back to the stone age.”

“This shockwave went out,” That Sam did remember, five years old and the lights popping out, and the whole world going suddenly quiet. Even their voices seemed muffled in the cdays that followed. “Knocked out everything electric still working. Killed every kind of power. Even drained batteries. And nothing would get any of it working right again. It’s like it broke the laws of nature or something.”

“Gasoline doesn’t even work right anymore,” a personal affront to Dean who’d had a collection of Matchbox cars at the time that even Sam wasn’t allowed to touch. “Which doesn’t make any damn sense.”

“People can survive without artificial power,” Castiel stared out over the empty town. “What else?”

“You asked why there aren’t any bumps in the night anymore?” Dean turned his back on the dead town and headed back to Baby where she grazed on weeds poking through broken pavement.

“There was a war,” Sam waved Castiel back. “Come on. We shouldn’t linger here.”

“Crawlers,” Castiel said grimly. “Croats that are still alive?”

“They’re not hard to take down anymore. But they only need to be successful once.” A line burned into young Sam’s head so hard that the words might as well have been branded under his eyelids.

“The other supernatural beings went to war with you?” Castiel pressed when the town had become a blurred dark thing behind them.

Dean was riding ahead, back ramrod straight though he kept stealing glances over his shoulder as if they might also recede into meaninglessness.  

“War sounds too simple. Like it was two sides,” Sam scrubbed a hand over his stubble. “All those things that Mom used to hunt, that Dad used to study, we were their food source and suddenly it was halved. They fought each other and they didn’t keep it under wraps.”

“That must’ve been bloody.”

“Yeah,” Sam shuddered out a sigh. “A lot of our parents’ friends died trying to stop it. Bobby and Ellen were the only adults that stuck around the commune all the time, just keeping an eye on us kids. I remember counting heads when they’d come back. Fewer every time.”

“But they won. You said there’s nothing left.”

“Nothing left of us either.” Sam plucked up one of the tall grasses.

“Salters. You must know others.”

“Ah,” Sam trailed the tip of the grass over Castiel’s neck, watched the sensation register and the involuntary snort of laughter. “Ticklish?”

“Sam. The other Salters. The tables they save, the bedrooms they keep aside waiting...”

“Sort of the family secret these days,” Sam played the grass between his fingers, folding it into an accordion. “Better to let people think an army of us could show any day.”

“It’s just the two of you?”

Sam shrugged, folded over and over and over again.  

Castiel asked Dean over dinner that night.

“Sam says that there aren’t many of you left?”

“Might be others,” Dean chewed through salted rabbit.

“But you haven’t seen them.”

“There’s places to leave messages. Drop spots. They’ve been empty a long time.”

“Ah,” Castiel wiped his fingers on a square of fabric that had once been his button up shirt. “It makes some sense to me now.”

“What does?”

“Why you and Sam are so different here,” He refolded the makeshift handkerchief, tucking it back into the one of the trenchcoat’s pocket.

“Different how?”

It’s Dean that asked which took Sam off guard. It was his kind of question, put to his brother’s lips.   

“My Sam and Dean,” the possessive ‘my’ came out hard, “are driven by their purpose. They make alliances and branch outward to further that purpose. They connect only in an effort to improve their odds, to come out the other side and then leave behind those connections. I had never imagined what it would look like if they were robbed of that motivation.”

“We’ve got motivation,” Dean said, half-heartedly. “We keep the spirits at bay. And there are plenty of dead walking.”

“It’s different,” Castiel shook his head. “You’re both...lighter. Happier.”

Sam stared at him stunned, waited for Dean to say something, but apparently the statement had taken speech from him too.  

“Really?” Was all Sam could come up with.

“I know that this is far from the world you might want. But in a peculiar way, it’s kinder for the two of you. You have each other and far less responsibility. There’s a weight of guilt that never settled fully on your shoulders. You smile more readily, you hurt each other far less. My...my boys. They tear each other to pieces sometimes.”  

“I wouldn’t.” Dean looked to Sam wild eyed as if Sam might not believe it. “I would never hurt Sam.”

“You would if you thought it was for his own good. If he had done terrible things.” Castiel tucked his arms around his legs. “If your mother hadn’t sacrificed herself to save you.”

“You can’t ask us to be grateful,” The parade of dead crossed behind Sam’s eyes.  

“I wouldn’t ask anything of you at all. Except to get me back to where I’m needed.”

“We don’t know how to do that,” Dean said gently.

“I know,” Castiel sighed. “Not yet.”

They followed the river. Sam’s tan deepened and Castiel burned over the bridge of his nose until Dean fished out an old wide brimmed hat and set it onto his head. It used to be Bobby’s and seeing it there, cowboy familiar, set a lump in Sam’s throat until he grew used to seeing the dark hair under the brim.

“Smell that?” Dean woke Sam up, scenting the air like a bloodhound.

“Fire?” Sam scrambled upwards, every muscle clenched in fear.

“No!” Dean laughed, laid a smacking kiss on his cheek. “Not today, Sammy boy. It’s the ocean.”

Castiel stirred at their feet, uncoiling like a snake. The tip of his nose twitched. It was sort of  adorable. Dean winked at Sam, sharing the thought and they both chuckled.

“I can’t smell it,” Castiel looked so put out that their laughter redoubled. “My nose not working properly is funny?”

“It’s working just fine,” Sam gulped in air, pushing Dean over. “Dean’s just imagining things.”

But Dean was good with water and wasn’t imagining anything. The dirt went sandy under Baby’s hooves and by noon they could all feel the change in the air. Sea birds flew overhead, calling out warnings to each other under wispy clouds.

“Hey, look,” Sam nosed into Dean’s ear. “See ‘em?”

“Course I do.”  

Salter signs, carved into trees. They were old, always old now, but recognizable.

“Safe house?”

“Probably not anymore,” Dean grumbled, but they followed the signs straight to the sea.

There was a cottage standing alone just where the grass sighed away into sand. A Salter sign in fading red paint called it safe, but at least a dozen years ago. The roof sagged, but looked whole for the most part. A few boards of the porch had rotted through.

“Whole thing could come down around our ears,” Dean kicked at the door experimentally.

“Maybe,” Sam glanced at Cas. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know much about construction,” Cas frowned, set his hands down on the wall as if he could pull the information straight out of the house itself. “But I don’t wish to sleep in the sand either.”

“We’ve got tents,” Dean rolled his eyes, but the lock eventually gave way to his persuasions.

The whole place reeked of disuse, dust watering their eyes and jamming down their throats. There was no furniture to moulder though or worse, bodies rotting. It seemed dry enough and though the boards creaked ominously, they didn’t so much as bend under their feet.

“We stay to the main room,” Dean decided, testing the rusted lock on the window. “Seems like it’s in the best shape.”  

They could watch the sun rise over the sea every morning if they wanted, safely inside. They might not even need to build a fire in the old pot belly stove. Sam went to get the bedrolls before Dean could change his mind.  

“How long will we stay?” Cas asked, handing Sam each new level of bedding with grim intensity.

“Usually we don’t settle for much more than a week. Maybe a few days more if we’ve got enough fresh food to keep the stocks from depleting.”

It would probably be less this time with a third mouth to feed, but Sam kept that to himself. No reason to make Cas feel worse.

“Every day that I’m away...” Cas began, but the sentence died there.

“I wish we could help more.” Sam smoothed down the edges of a blanket. “But there’s not a lot of resources left, you know? We lost a lot when the bunker collapsed and then most of the rest when the commune got wiped out in a flood.”

“Commune?”

“The dozen or so of us left. Men of Letters and hunters all mixed up together. Exactly what Dad and Mom would have wanted,” Sam laughed, only a little bitter after all the time passing. “They were a little Romeo and Juliet that way. Maybe more than a little.”

“You said this all happened because your father couldn’t live without her.”

“He tried, I guess,” Sam glanced up, checking for Dean.

“He went for a walk, I believe.”

“Scouting,” he fluffed a pillow absently. “Dad gave up the day Mom fell. Dean’ll say he tried his best, but I don’t remember that. I remember being four and the world outside was crazy, but not where we lived. It was quiet and kind and we had all these people that loved us. Then my Mom....well. Dad stopped looking at me, stopped talking to me. I was little kid stupid, you know? Clueless. Kept trying harder and harder to get his attention, but it was like I was a million miles away.”

“Perhaps you were, to him.”

“Maybe,” Sam sat back on his heels, looked over Cas’ still judgeless expression.  “Bobby moved us away one afternoon, from our old bedroom to one closer to his. Dean wouldn’t have it. Kept sneaking back to Dad all the time. It was easier between the two of them. Dean missed Mom more than me. Misses Dad more too.

“Guess that makes me sort of fucked up.”  

“Grief cannot be measured,” Cas said gravely. “You think of them often. You dream of your mother.”

“How’d you know that?” Sam dug his hands into his thighs.

“You called for her on the first night I fell. Dean soothed you quickly. I assumed it was a regular occurrence.”

“There’s nothing regular about it.”  

“I’ve begun to have dreams,” Castiel studied his hands. “I always imagined them more like...memories. But they’re closer to hallucinations.”

“Depends, I guess,” Sam hesitated, but the curiosity ate at him and he had to ask, “What do you dream about?”

“Ruins mostly. Still lakes in the middle of vast wildernesses. Angels, sometimes. They don’t speak.” Cas flexed his fingers against his thighs. “They just stare. Dean, often. Sam, sometimes.”

“I see my mother,” Sam offered up, a fair exchange of pain. “I was there when she...I wasn’t supposed to be. She snuck out in the middle of the night, kissed me and Dean goodbye in our beds. He kept sleeping, but I woke up. I followed her.”

“She let you?”

“I don’t think she heard me. Saw me,” Sam had turned it over a thousand times, but his memories were tattered youthful things. Had she really caught his eye before throwing herself into Lucifer’s embrace? Or had he imagined it? Surely she would have noticed her four year old son ducking into the backseat of her car. But she’d never said a word. Lucifer had noticed though, had taken Sam into a painful hug and paraded him as a prize in the long weeks it took Mary to fight him down. Until the very end when she made Lucifer’s hand unclench, so she wouldn’t drag Sam down to hell with them. At least, Sam liked to think that was what happened. Better to believe that than some lingering affection on the part of Lucifer that saved him. “She was sort of preoccupied.”

“My Sam,” Cas’ hand bridged the distance between them, tapped gently at Sam’s fingers, “threw himself in.”

“And he got out again?” Sam’s treacherous heart flared with hope.

“Not intact. Not without consequences. I removed him without his soul.”

“You did?”

Cas made to draw away, but Sam snatched his hand, held it tight.

“I had too much power. It was a foolish thing in the end, but how could I leave a great man to burn?”

“I was good there?” The question came out more wistful than he intended.

“No. They aren’t good men,” Cas’ lip twitched something between a smile and a frown. “They’re too hardened for that, too practical. But they are very great men. Here though...”

Sam lifted his chin, made himself meet Cas’ steady stare.

“Here?” He prompted.

“Here, you’re good. You work thanklessly at something that pains you. You sacrifice of yourself even though there’s no vengeance pushing you forward. You do the right thing because it’s the right thing.”

“Dean would say we’re sick because of what we do together. That it stains us.”

“But you wouldn’t?”

“No,” Sam smiled tightly. “I’d say that he’s the only person in the world that I love left alive and I don’t see how showing him that anyway I can is anything less than right.”

Cas nodded once, slowly. “It’s strange. You must be the same age as my Sam, but you’re much younger all the same.”

“It sounds like his life has been longer than mine.”

“Yes,” Cas finally dropped his gaze to the bedroll. “Truer than you know.”  

“Don’t you two look cheerful,” Dean banged into the house. “Someone die while I was gone?”

“Just talking.”  

“Uh huh.” Dean dropped a long slender branch and twine at Sam’s feet. “Make me a rod? Not sure I can get anything from the shallows, but it’s worth a shot.”

“Fish?” Sam smiled hopefully.

“I said I’m not sure if I can catch anything. Too late today to try anyway. If you’re not an ass though, I’ll try tomorrow morning.”

“Awesome,” Sam beamed at him until Dean grinned back. Cas looked between them and ever so cautiously, he smiled as well. It was a soft small thing, but it sunk a hook into Sam’s chest. Caught. Held.

“Yeah,” Dean cleared his throat. “Awesome.”  

Living in the sweet beached air was even better than Sam remembered. They did wake early, Dean picking up Sam’s rod. Cas had fashioned himself a spear from a thicker branch. The pair of them looked like ancient warriors as they padded barefoot out onto the shore, shirtless in the forgiving early morning sun. Sam watched them indolently from the shore, sipping tar strong coffee and tracing patterns in the sand with his toes.  

He watched Dean cast out his line, standing too close to Cas. Their conversation must’ve been whisper low, eaten by the crash of waves. They looked good together, two dark mussed heads bent to their tasks. Occasionally Cas would leave Dean’s side to thrust his makeshift stick into the water, after a few failed attempts, he started returning to Dean with fish. He held them aloft like offerings and Dean grinned wide, praising him in his rough way.

It was a drama that Sam would have happily watched a thousand times. He liked how Cas, ageless angel despite his human wrapping, deferred to Dean and how that made Dean open like a flower to the sun. Sam should probably feel jealous like he did when Dean lowered his eyelashes at some pretty townie, but it didn’t come.

Eventually, Sam went rock gathering. He piled his finds over a small flame so he could bake the fish Dean enthusiastically gutted.

“What are you doing?” Cas kneeled down beside him the sand, smelling of the sun and the sea.  

“I’ll show you.”

They made the stone oven together, baking pale strips of flesh while Dean washed blood from his hands. The water here was mostly fresh, but it carried a tinge of brine from the Atlantic. The safety of so much salt on Dean’s skin settled Sam’s stomach, turning him unusually ravenous.

“Gonna kill the whole stock,” Dean chided, passing Sam the last piece.

“There’s more ten feet away,” Sam took it with his teeth right from Dean’s fingertips.

“Sam!” Dean hissed scandalized.

“I’m going to go for a walk,” Cas stood, granules of sand tumbling from his borrowed pants.

“You don’t-”

“I don’t mind,” Cas pressed his hand to Dean’s shoulder. “There’s much here I would like to see.”

“I can’t believe you,” Dean scolded as soon as Cas was out of earshot.

“Why not?” Sam lay back on the scratchy towel he’d hauled down earlier. “He doesn’t care.”

“Sam,” Dean huffed, eyes already pulled to where Sam’s pants slid down his hips.  

“I liked watching you with him,” Sam angled up his knee, invitation and provocation. “Is that weird?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I like how you look together. I think I’d like to see more.”

“Jesus fuck, Sammy.”

“I like him. I think about his fingers on your hips. His lips on your neck. I bet you’d open right up for him,” Sam slid his hands over his own thighs. “Would you let him fuck you?”

“Yeah,” Dean groaned and shucked off his shirt to kneel between Sam’s legs, “I would. Let him fuck you too. I want to watch him open you with those long fingers of his, watch him plough you open and then I want to have you too.”

“Think he’d do it?”

“Dunno,” with rough impatience, Dean jerked Sam’s pants down around his knees. “But I’m hard as a rock just talking about it.”

So Sam kept up a litany of filth right into Dean’s ear, descriptions dirtier than he knew he had in him as Dean worked him open and slid in with a skin-shivering groan. It wasn’t until words failed him and Sam’s head rolled back on neck muscles gone weak with satisfaction that he spotted the shadow among the reeds.

“He’s looking.” Sam gasped out.

“What?” Dean paused in his pistoning, eyes wide.

“He’s watching us.”  

They went still for an instant, decision humming between them. Then Dean raised an eyebrow, Sam winked back at him and it was off again. The pace slowed a little, Dean showboating for their audience. He used the lazy long pace that made Sam break off each moan before it started.

When they came at last, it was with Sam’s hollow groan and Dean’s hard bite at Sam’s shoulder. They clung together afterwards, one long kiss traded back and forth until Dean’s arms gave out and he collapsed beside Sam.

“He gone?”

“Can’t tell,” Sam used a handkerchief to clean off his stomach. “Too dark.”

“That was sort of fucked up, huh?”

“Dunno. More fucked up then what?”

The first star pushed through the growing dark, flaring to life.

“Is this something you really want to do?” Dean asked.

“I...yeah. You?”

“No.”

“Dean.”

“Look...I. I shouldn’t want it, right? I mean, it’s you and no one else, right?”

“It’s different with him. It’s okay. I’m not pissed. If you want him, if you think he’d want us back...”

“Okay, Sammy,” Dean kissed him. “Okay, but slow. We don’t want to freak him out.”

Sam had never been good at slow. He moved their things back to the shelter as the night grew cold, Dean lingering behind to dose the fire and brood. When the last of the sunlight had gone, Cas crept back inside. He hesitated in the doorway.

“You watched,” Sam said gently, ever so gently.

“I didn’t intend to,” Cas’ breath caught, unsteady in his throat. “I should have taken a walk as I said I would. I invaded your privacy.”

“That would have been stupid,” Sam grinned. “Since it was all for you.”

Cas blinked once, twice, the faint blush turning to deep red. “Sam.”

“Everyone keeps saying my name that way today. I’m going to get a complex.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Dean likes you. A lot,” Sam shrugged. “I like you. I think you like us. Or maybe you like the people we look like. I thought maybe...if you wanted that you could...you know.”

“No,” Cas looked thoroughly confused now. “I don’t know.”

“You can be with us. For now. Until you figure out how to get home or how to get by here without us. Or forever,” The last bit spilled out, unbidden, but Sam didn’t mind. Forever wasn’t likely to be very long for them anyway.  

“What you and Dean have is too precious for me to interrupt.”

“What we have is too strong for you to even begin to try,” Sam said firmly.

“You truly believe that?”

“Ask Dean. He tried to walk out on me a few times. Hell, I tried to walk out on him once. Neither of us have ever managed more than a day apart.”

“My Sam left for four years once. For college,” Cas stared off in the distance as if he could see straight into that other universe. “I’m not sure Dean has forgiven him yet.”

“I don’t know about that. But you know what I do know? Cas. Look at me.”

“Yes, Sam,” and Cas’ gaze was such a palpable thing that Sam shivered.

“I know that I want to be your Sam. I want you to look at me when you say that name.”

“I wouldn’t mind that either,” Dean leaned in the doorway. “Keep feeling like there’s someone just behind me, waiting to take over.”

“I can’t do that,” Cas swallowed hard. “I’ve bled for them. Gave over my identity, everything...it’s been to help them. I can’t turn my back on that.”

“Okay,” Sam glanced up at Dean, saw the wreck held back by thinned lips and arms crossed hard over his chest. “But just for now. Just until you get back. Can’t we borrow you? Make you happy?”

“Sam, you heard the man,” Dean’s shoulders hunched.  

“You think you could make me happy?” Cas asked and for a moment, Sam was wounded. But the inquiry seemed so genuine.

“I think that we would try our best. And Dean’s best is pretty damn good and mine is amazing,” Sam reached out, thumbed a line down Cas’ jaw. “If you still want to go, you won’t break our hearts, okay?”

“Sam.” Cas grabbed his wrist with too much strength, but he didn’t push him away.

“Look at it this way,” Dean squatted down beside them, his face so close to Castiel that they might as well have been kissing, “it’s a vacation. From your reality. You go back and no matter what shit those guys toss at you, you’ve got us to remember.”

“I love him,” Cas dropped his head, the admission almost painfully shameful.

Dean didn’t draw away as Sam had expected. If anything, he got impossibly closer and nuzzled his nose into Cas’ hair.

“I know, man,” he sighed. “I know.”

“I saved him from Hell,” Cas leaned into Dean, steadied there. “Remade his body. I’ve held his soul within myself.”

“I was in Hell?” Dean’s arm found it’s way around Cas’ shoulders.

“You did it for Sam. To save his life.”

“Sounds like something you’d do,” Sam said.

“Yeah, it does,” Dean winked, but there wasn’t any spirit behind it.

“I can’t,” Cas murmured.

“You don’t have to,” Sam assured. “Really, you don’t. We just thought you might want it and not want to ask for it. So this is us. Offering.”

“It would betray him.”

“Would it?” Dean sighed. “Has he ever invited you to bed, Cas?”

“It wouldn’t be bodily betrayal.”

“I get it,” Sam glared at Dean, who wrinkled his nose right back at him. “But from what you’ve said, you guys are friends, right?”

“Yes.”

“But not lovers?”

Cas hesitated, but ultimately conceded, “No. We’re not.”

“Then he doesn’t have a monopoly on your bed, Cas. Doesn’t matter how close you guys are. And if he’s anything like my Dean, then he’d want you to explore that part of yourself.”

“Hell yeah,” Dean’s annoyance melted into approval. “Sam’s right.”

“What if one day he wishes more?”

“You can’t stay chaste forever, hoping for a one day,” Dean said firmly. “Just ask Sammy on that one. Little ass couldn’t even wait until he was eighteen.”

“Pining seemed pointless,” Sam stuck his tongue out at Dean.  

“I would like to hear that story,” Cas looked between them.

“What? Now?” Dean raised an eyebrow.

“Why not now?” Resettling himself more comfortably, Sam reached for the bottle of whiskey he’d kept close at hand. The slow burn brought him back. “It was summer.”

“Just starting on it,” apparently Dean was game for story hour, maybe predicting why or maybe just done talking about feelings. “You’d just turned seventeen a month or two ago. Shot up about ten feet that year. Outgrew everything.”

“Yeah. Must’ve looked ridiculous all stretched out like that. No meat on my bones.”

“Not ridiculous,” Dean grumbled. “Don’t fish for compliments.”

“Not fishing,” well, maybe a little. “Anyway, I don’t really know what changed that summer besides getting taller. The commune had settled by this lake and it got hot really early. I remember that clearly. We went swimming every day we could.”

“You went swimming. I played lifeguard in case you and Jo drowned each other.”

“Is that what you call dragging me under by the ankle every time you thought you could get away with it,” Sam rolled his eyes. “Maybe that’s what changed. You started touching me a lot more. Or maybe I just noticed it more.”

“It was all you,” Dean hadn’t let go of Cas, drawing him practically into Dean’s lap. Cas was listening, eyes at half mast and apparently willing to let Dean mold him as he pleased.

“Could’ve been. Like I said, I don’t remember what changed. But I do remember waking up to the idea. Morning after morning with these impressions. That something good had happened while I slept and I just couldn’t remember it. Something...not allowed.”

“You’d moan in your sleep,” Dean snorted at the memory. “Used to think you were a late bloomer with the wet dreams or something.”

“You heard me?”

“I slept two feet away, of course I heard you.”

“You never said.”

“I’m saying it now.”

“Oh,” Sam turned it over in his head. “I never said your name?”

“You didn’t talk or anything.”

“Were the dreams premonitions?” Cas asked, perfectly practical as if he wasn’t trying to bury himself under Dean’s skin.

“I thought so then,” Sam shrugged. “Now, I’m not so sure. They never gave me headaches and they only came when I was sleeping. I usually do my visioning wide awake.”

“Except when you saw my world.”  

“Yeah,” Sam rubbed his palms against his jeans. “Maybe it’s related. Think I was seeing that other Dean? Hope the other Sam wasn’t dealing with the same thing I was.”

“They’ve never shown any inclination,” Cas considered it quietly. “I think my Sam wouldn’t have told my Dean even if he did. He would have held it in. Let it rot.”

“God. Poor bastard,” Sam exhaled roughly.

“Sucks for both of them,” Dean said. “Go on Sam. You were having sexy dreams of other me-”

“You. They were definitely this you.” It had to be. Sam refused to believe that the most pivotal time in his life had been prodded into being by images of a stranger. 

“Okay. Relax. Me then. Tell the nice angel the story.”

“Fine. So there were dreams and they started getting clearer and clearer. I’d had other visions by then, so I thought...no. I was  _sure_ that that’s what they were. That one way or another, I’d wind up with Dean in my bed and since it aligned with what I wanted, I never examined it too hard.”

It occurred to Sam that he’d never told anyone this story. The only person who would have wanted to hear it was Dean and he’d lived through it. Had his own version. They’d talked about parts of it over the years, but Sam had never strung it all together. Never heard his own certainty without evidence, his own decision to discard an entire chunk of morality without a second look.

“And then you made your plan,” Dean prompted.

“Plan was probably too organized a word,” Sam grinned. “I decided to seduce him. But I had no idea what I was doing.”

“Mostly he started whining less and sending me more smoldering looks.”  

“Hey, you liked those looks.”

“I thought you were coming down with something,” Dean rolled his eyes. “Kept touching his forehead looking for a fever.”

“But something must’ve worked,” Cas guessed. “Something got him to act.”

“Oh, something did all right.” Dean laughed. “He got impatient with his own schemes and jumped me. Kissed me smack on the lips.”

“I didn’t get impatient. It was a pretty night, big moon, fireflies out and you had on that shirt I liked. You know with the thing on it.”

“Yeah, with the v-neck. I remember. You cried when it got torn.”

“Didn’t,” Sam grinned at him. He had definitely been upset over it. It was the only shirt that showed off the marks Sam had liked to leave back then. The marks that seemed silly and pointless now, but meant everything to his hormone soaked past self. “I got carried away. I didn’t know what I was doing. First kiss.”

“Should’ve fooled around with Jo.”

“Wouldn’t even if I could’ve,” Sam shrugged loosely. “She never did it for me like she did for you.”

“Long time ago,” Dean spilled a shot of whiskey onto the floor. “Good woman though.”

“She was. Anyway. Dean shoved me off and ran away.”

“I didn’t run.”

“You left scorch marks behind you got out of there so fast,” Sam shook his head. “I don’t know why, but I didn’t panic or get worried. I just sat right there, watched the moon go up and waited. Maybe it was those dreams. I thought that it was all inevitable, I guess. Maybe I was even right. ”

“That’s how I found him. Three hours later and he’s still in the damp grass, cool as you please.” Dean stroked his hand up and down Cas’ arm. “This kid, man. He knew I’d come back if he didn’t get home. Knew I couldn’t leave him out there and couldn’t explain to someone else why they had to get him. So I had to go.”

“Not my fault you’re overprotective.”

“Little bastard kissed me again. Practically bit me.”

“He dragged me back to the house by my arm,” Sam could still feel the sharp sting of fingerprints digging into his flesh, the spike of sweat and fear that he could smell on his brother’s skin. “But as soon as we were alone in our bedroom, I went for it again.”

“I thought he was possessed or something like one of the stories out of Dad’s journal. But he just kept on like that, no matter what kind of water I threw on him. When I finally started asking why, he’d say-”

“Because there’s nothing else I want in the world as much as I want you,” Sam said it with the same passion he’d felt at seventeen. Always would.

“Yeah. That,” Dean buried a smile in Cas’ hair. “And what guy can turn that down?”

“You apparently. Still took me months to wear you down.”

“Nah. I lost that battle the first time you said it. Everything after that was just stupid things like morals and shit. Hell, it was probably lost the day you were born.”   

“There was never anyone else for me,” Sam stretched out his legs, tried not to crack his knees. He wasn’t in the mood to needle Dean, not when he was being downright romantic for him. “Took awhile to get Dean to get on that page, but we got there.”

“Had a few last oats to sow, I guess.”

“Mhm,” Sam took the bottle back from Dean, their fingers in slipslided against each other for far longer than required. “So that’s it.”

“And you would give that up for me?” Cas’ eyes reopened, he seemed to realized his position and went still in Dean’s arms. “Why? You barely know me.”

“What are we giving up?” Dean demanded. “What are we losing?”

“He means me, Dean.” Sam cut in. “Losing, I don’t know...purity? Whatever lifelong monogamy means. I don’t think of it as a loss. Not this way.  I guess because you seem like you’re a part of it already somehow. You know us. You just...”

“Fit,” Dean reached out to Sam, drawing him into the huddle he’d made of himself and Cas. Sam went, chin onto Dean’s shoulder, arm around Dean’s waist. “Sam’s not some sacred virgin or something. I’ve despoiled him plenty. He’s just a choosy sort of guy. You should be flattered.”

“I am.” Cas sighed. “I am...deeply honored.”

“But you’re going to turn us down,” Sam hid his disappointment well, he thought.

“I’m going to go for a walk. I need to think.”

Dean released him so quickly that it almost spilled Sam backwards too. Cas got to his feet calmly and strode out the door.

“Should’ve waited,” Dean grumbled as Sam resettled.

“What for? What if we do figure out how to get him home and he leaves and we never asked? I wanted to at least try.”

“He’s scared, Sammy. Away from his family and we’re the only people he knows. And we try to jump his bones.”

“There was no jumping,” Sam nipped at Dean’s neck. “He hasn’t actually rejected us, you know. Just said he had to think. You told me that for weeks on end.”

Dean leaned his head back onto Sam’s shoulder, “You really think your crazy wet dreams about me were visions?”

“I don’t know. I did. Then I didn’t. But Cas is right. I did see the other us that way, so why not that?”

“So whoever wants you to get rid of ghosts also wants you to be with me?” Dean asked with a tight sort of hope.

“I’d like to think so,” Sam kissed the corner of his lips. “You still looking for absolution?”

“No.” Dean turned abruptly, all elbows and knees for a second until he was settled in front of Sam. “It’d be nice though, wouldn’t it? To know someone out there cares that we’re happy?”

“You mean like God?”

“No. Fuck him,” Dean grinned and Sam had to kiss him. “Mm. No not God. I mean like Mom or Dad. Or whatever freakin’ water spirit gives out visions.”

“You think Mom or Dad would send me those kinds of visions?” Sam frowned. “Gross.”

“Maybe not. Or maybe they didn’t know what would be in them? Just sort of, I don’t know, good vibrations?”

“Why not?” Sam always imagined that his visions came as a punishment, considering how they’d intensified since they’d started fucking. But if loving Dean came with a price, it was one Sam would always willingly pay. Still, if it comforted Dean to think that forgiveness was at hand, who was he to ruin it? “Long as it ends up the same way.”

“Cas says it doesn’t though. Not where he comes from,” Dean bit his lip.

“I don’t envy them. I probably should, but I don’t.”

“Way Cas talks, they’re kind of miserable fucks,” Dean shrugged. “Miserable fucks, who wouldn’t know a good thing if it bit them in the ass.”

“Sounds like they’ve got a lot more to deal with than we do.”

“Why are you being so nice to them?”

“I saw them.” Sam touched his forehead to Dean’s, needed to feel him solidly there. “I saw how worn down they were. It was like they were thirty years older than us.”

“Our world ended.”

“Maybe theirs did too.” Sam cupped Dean’s chin. “Only maybe no one else told their world yet.”

They kissed without any intention of going further, an exchange that kept them grounded. Eventually Dean led them to the bedroll, even kicking off his boots without being asked. They lay on top of the blankets, in silent agreement to wait for Cas’ return.

He returned with the grey predawn light on his heels, eyes red rimmed, but his shoulders unbent. He walked to the bedroll and stared down at them.

“Come sleep,” Sam picked at a blanket. “Just...rest for now.”

“I’ve decided,” Cas told him, blearily.

“You can tell us just as easily with some shut eye,” Dean tugged Cas down by his wrist. “Take off your shoes first though. Sammy’ll pitch a fit otherwise.”

They settled him between them, leeching the cold off him as best they could without touching. Sam thought he might not sleep, too wire tense to relax, but the heat started to rise and he drifted into darkness.

  _“He probably lost the damn phone,” Dean braced his elbows on either side of a plastic square.  Dream Sam lay prone on a white bed, his skin a shabby grey. “Prayed at him too. Fat lot of good thad did.”_

_“He’s alive,” Dream Sam croaked. “C’mon. We’d know. Someone would know-”_

_“How?” Dean demanded, choked. “Other angels say he isn’t tuned in. Just...gone.”_

_“Faith,” Dream Sam closed his eyes._

_“Ha. Good one,” Dean looked up. “Sam? Sammy? Shit. Sam!”_

_Dream Sam mumbled, still alive and Dean fell backwards, face turning to the heavens._

_“I can’t do this,” He scrubbed at his face and he was wrong and angry and twisted, but he was still Dean. Sam couldn’t stand by while Dean hurt._

_“We have him,” He said, the words muffled. “He’s okay, Dean. He’s safe.”_

_“Sammy?” Dean looked to Dream Sam, still passed out and mouth slack._

_“I promise he’s safe,” Sam repeated._

_“Fuck, I’m losing my damn mind,” Dean whipped around, trying to pinpoint the voice. “Look, whoever you are, if you got Cas then I want him back.”_

_“We’re trying. He wants to come back to you.”_

_Dean stared blankly at the space Sam occupied, then finally, quietly he asked, “Why?”_

 

“I dreamed of them,” Sam said before he’d opened his eyes. He knew Dean was there, could hear him tinkering with the coffee pot. So it must be Cas beside him, inches away, but still not quite touching.

“Are they well?”

“Sam is sicker, I think,” He tried to catch hold of the details, wanting to give them to Cas before they could slip away. “Dean looks tired. He’s worried about you and Sam. He prayed to you. Called you.”

“He always does. I don’t know why.”

“That’s funny. He asked me the same thing.”

“You spoke with him?” Cas sat up, letting the cold air in.

Sam yanked the covers back down and recounted it as best he could remember.

“So what? You’re traveling there now?” Dean pressed a mug into Sam’s hand.

“No idea,” Sam reluctantly sat up to take his first sip of coffee. “Maybe not? Maybe that was a dream. Maybe it all is.”

“He has to know why I come back,” Cas sounded lost and more bitter than Dean’s brew. “Why doesn’t he know?”

“Same reason you don’t know that he wants you there, I guess,” Sam pried an eye open. “You guys need to talk more.”

“That’s always your answer,” Dean complained.

“And I’m always right.”  

“Brat.”

“Ass,” Sam yawned.

“It doesn’t change my decision,” Cas declared. He stole Sam’s coffee cup, taking a gulp and then handing it back solemnly.

“No?” Sam glanced up at Dean, who shrugged. “What is it?”

“If I had met two strangers on the road who cared for me and aided me when I required it, who trusted me when they had little reason too...if they asked me to share their bed, I don’t think I would’ve had the same reluctance,” Cas licked his lips. It was a nervous gesture, but it shivered over Sam and behind him Dean’s breath caught. “I don’t want to leave here, be it in an hour or a lifetime, with regrets. And I would regret very much not being with both of you.”

“We would regret it too,” Sam moved slowly as if Cas might spook away.  

It was Cas who kissed him, knocking away whatever delicacy Sam had planned. He kissed with a hunger, one hand hard on Sam’s shoulder, tilting him down for a better angle. When he’d sufficiently dizzied Sam, he moved past him to lay into Dean. Sam watched, dazed, as Dean melted into the kiss, lost in an instant.

“I would like to eat,” Cas announced when he pulled away, leaving Dean glazed over and pink lipped. “And swim. But then...”

“Yeah,” Dean’s eyes widened. “Yeah, okay. That’s okay, Sammy?”

“Yeah, Dean,” Sam laughed. “That’s okay.”

A pleasant tension hummed between them as they made a meal of rice and yesterday’s remaining catch. Dean kept darting looks at Cas then back to Sam with a sort of guilty pleasure that flipped Sam’s stomach around. They took to the water with a reckless giddiness, starting up a ruthless splash fight that nearly drowned Dean and left Sam’s hair a sopping mess.

“Someone better be brushing this for me,” he grumbled.

“Don’t worry Sammy. You’re still the prettiest,” Dean tugged at one lock and then gagged around a mouthful of water. “Sam!”

“What?” He grinned and then went under, Cas’ hand around his ankle.

Even after they emerged, no one was in a rush to return to the cabin. The sun beat pleasantly down, sucking away the damp. Sam coaxed Cas into building a sandcastle, showed him the way to pack the wet sand with the dry. Dean dribbled on turrets, manned them with shell soldiers. When the tide ate their work, the fishermen debated bait while Sam put together a second meal more rice with mussels he’d scooped up while Dean and Cas argued over hooks.

They waited for the sun to go down. The fresh darkness gave them more freedom, more liberty. Dean, fearless and fierce, set his hands onto Cas’ shoulders. Cas’ breath caught, sputtered and then released in one long shaky breath.

“Okay?” Dean thumbed the line of Cas’ jaw.  

Sam waited, kneeling on the blanket and watching as they came together. They kissed exchanging one tentative peck to another until they melted into one long sensuous line. The jealousy that Sam had braced himself for, didn’t come.

“Go on,” Dean nudged Cas gently away.

Sam waited, watched under the stars’ cool light as Cas approached him. Their bodies fell together gracefully as Cas climbed into Sam’s lap. Sam’s lips parted and he poured a lot in that first press of lips. His hands fell across the span of Cas’ back as if he could heal that invisible damage.

It was Dean that did the lion share of work, stripping them all down between lingering touches. Sam concentrated on keeping Cas on the wire’s edge. He learned that Cas didn’t like biting, but he enjoyed being grabbed and manhandled.  

“What do you think?” Dean ran his hands over Cas’ chest, grinning at Sam over Cas’ shoulder. “Want him to fuck you, Sammy?”

“Yeah,” Sam groaned.

“Want him, Cas?” Dean nuzzled Cas’ neck. “I promise he’s good. The best.”

“I want whatever you’ll give me,” Cas whispered.

It made Sam want to break open his chest and hand Cas his still beating heart. Maybe Dean felt the same, the tug of his breath like one sucker punched.

With a shaking hand, it was Dean that prepped Sam. He opened him as if it were the first time again, so slow and careful that Sam’s threats slurred into a moan long before Dean thought him ready.

“Do you know how?” Dean asked, even as he gathered Cas up and settled him between Sam’s spread legs.

The blunt head of Cas’ cock teased over Sam’s hole.

“I believe I can piece it together from here.”

It was a slow, maddening thing, the way Cas slid inside. Sam felt fevered, dizzy with it all.

“It’s okay, Sammy.” Dean slid around, pressing himself to Sam’s side, the hard press of his erection rubbing against Sam’s hip. “You look...fuck, you look perfect.”

They kissed, a messy angle, but it must’ve done something for Cas, his tentative thrusts taking on a promising edge.

“Do you like to watch us?” Dean murmured, never moving away from Sam’s lips, even as he talked to Cas. “Like to see how I take care of him?”

“You’re both beautiful,” Cas gasped, falling forward on his hands. The change in angle sent a vibration under Sam’s skin and he clutched desperately at Dean.

“It’s okay, Sammy. You can come if you want.”

“Please, Sam,” Cas cajoled.

And who was Sam to resist such persuasion? He came in a liquid rush, head tilted back and his eyes on the stars. He wasn’t entirely sure if Cas came or not. Vaguely, he was aware of Dean pulled Cas back and the slurping sounds of an inexpert blowjob. The ceiling of light danced over them, the stars withholding their judgment.

The heated peace of that night lasted into the next few days. Sam grew used to having another person to pull close, another mouth on his cock, another set of fine boned hands on his hips. He was spoiled with it, drunk on the intensity of so much affection. Dean smiled more too, a secret, shy smile that he hid away if he thought the others might spot it.  When Sam did catch them, Dean got flustered and defensive.

“Hey, you burn that and I’m sticking your hand in warm water while you sleep!” Dean threatened, tossing a bit of seaglass at Sam when he got caught out. It bounced harmlessly into the sand.

“Why is that a threat?” Cas rescued the seaglass, turning it over and over in his fingers as if it would give up its secrets to him.

“Makes you pee your bed, supposedly. But since we share a bed, sort of a dumb prank.”

“Not as dumb as shaving off my eyebrows,” Dean grumbled.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Couldn’t look at you without laughing for a week. That sucked.”

“That wasn’t even a prank! It was just asshole behavior.”

“Oh,” Cas said very very quietly. “Pranks.”

“What about them?” Sam put a hand on Cas’ knee. “Traumatic wing pulling incident?”

“No. Well. Yes, but that’s beside the point. Dean, you’ve memorized your father’s journal?”

“Just about. Why?”

“Is there anything in there about a trickster?”

“Trickster,” Dean ran his tongue over his teeth. “Not that I can think of. That some kind of demon?”

“A god.”

“A god, I’d remember,” Sam butted in. “I’ve read that thing a dozen times too and Dad got very specific about things on that level.”

“What about Gabriel? The archangel.”

“Only angels Dad knew by name were Michael, Lucifer, Uriel, Zachariah and some guy he was only half sure was an angel. Baffles?”

“Balthazar,” Sam corrected.

“Yeah, that one.”

“What about Loki? Anansi? Monkey? Spider? Coyote?”

“None of that sounds familiar.”

“I know the stories about Loki.” Sam offered.

“Thank you, but that’s not what I need,” Cas folded his fingers around the seaglass. “One of my brothers lived on earth. He died in the battle of the apocalypse, but if your parents never encountered him and he lived, it would be possible that he did not get trapped when Heaven closed.”

“Okay, so one of your brothers might be kicking around? So..what? Family reunion?” Dean asked, his spine stiff.

“Gabriel was an archangel, masquerading as a pagan god. He had the power to create entire worlds, to manipulate time-”

“To send someone between universes,” Sam finished grimly.

“Yes. But only if he’s alive. Only if he still has his abilities. Only if he’d agree to do it which is far from certain,” Cas intoned. “The chances are small.”

“We’re good with long odds,” Dean found a smile from somewhere. “So what do we have to do to find him?”

“Pray.”

They ate dinner first. It wasn’t burnt and Cas seemed reluctant to begin.

“I’m not sure that I can reach him. Without a soul...”

“So we’ll all do it,” Sam washed fish oil from his hands. “It can’t hurt, right?”

“You two can. I don’t pray. Sorry, Cas,” Dean fiddled with the Colt.

“I understand.”

“So what should I say?” Sam asked, drying his fingers too carefully.

“Just ask him where he is, if he can help. There’s no magic formula to prayer.”

So Sam got down on the wooden floor of some dead Salter’s cabin and prayed to a being his parents had died to save him from.

_Archangel Gabriel who art...on earth, we need your help. Your brother Cas, I mean Castiel, he’s stuck here. He crash landed into our laps, me and my brother Dean. Crash landed into the wrong universe. He thinks you might be his only chance of getting back. I don’t want to see him go, but I know he’s needed where he came from. Please, if you can help him_.

He opened his eyes and nothing had changed. Dean watched with an ‘I told you so’ look. Cas still had his eyes screwed shut, his palms pressed hard to his thighs.  

“Cas, I don’t-” Sam began and then choked on the words as a lightening rod of pain shot down his spine.

“Sam!” Dean was on him in a second, holding him as he spasmed. “Jesus, get a cloth! He’s bleeding.”

Sam couldn’t feel the wellspring of blood flooding from his nose or the foam of spit at the corners of his mouth. All there was room for was the pain. The pain and a message emblazoned in fiery letters a thousand feet tall. He shivered in his frail fragile body.

“It’s a message,” He gritted out.

“Sam, please,” Cas was touching him, Sam could feel it dimly. “It’s not worth this. Let it go.”

“He says, ‘Make the Winchester pilgrimage, little sparrow. I’ll meet you there.’”

The letters went out, one by one, bulbs blowing in Sam’s head. He passed into the darkness with a sigh of relief.  

He dreamed of the fire. Watched his mother stand on the brink of the edge of the world and catch alight as easily as a match. She smiled at him, waved and fell and fell and fell, the inferno rising up in her place. 

“It’s okay, c’mon baby boy, c’mon-” Dean’s mantra rattled into Sam’s ear, rousing him from smoke.

“M’ok,” Sam slurred.

“Sammy,” Dean was touching him, pinching his nose closed and talking right into his ear.

“S’me.”

“You had a seizure, I think. Don’t move. Fucking visions.”

“That was no vision,” Cas must have been the one with the wet cloth, blessedly cool against Sam’s forehead. “That was the unrestrained voice of an archangel.”

“Remind me to punch him in the face when we meet him,” Sam thought he got all the words out though they sounded mushed together.

“You get the first shot,” Dean drew his hand away from Sam’s nose reluctantly. “But I want second swing.”

“Hitting him would be inadvisable,” Cas warned, but there was barely concealed wrath in his voice that suggested he might be third in that line.  

Most of that night was lost to Sam. He faded in and out, wrapped up in every blanket they owned, sweating and chilled all at once. When the morning light crept in though, he felt nearly human. He pried himself from Dean’s grip and stumbled out into the open air.

He could make out a figure by the water’s edge and after a few fortifying breaths, he made his way to the shoreline.

“I’m sorry for what my brother did to you,” Cas said when Sam came up beside him.  

“Yeah, well. You didn’t know,” Sam shivered as the water trickled over his toes and retreated. “So where are we headed to find him?”

“You should not come. If his voice can so destroy you than being in his presence-”

“You’re not going alone.”

“I am perfectly capable of doing so.”

“I’m perfectly capable of doing a lot of things that are terrible for me,” Sam pointed out. “If you think we’re just going to let you wander out into the sunset and spend the rest of our lives wondering, then you’ve got another think coming.”

“Perhaps I should not make the journey at all.”

Sam watched the waves. There had been a community here once, most likely. Summer houses and children with buckets. He had seen faded photographs of old lives, so different than what he knew that they might as well be fiction. In another thirty years, he would probably join them. Sixty seemed an ambitious age for him and Dean, an impossible skein of years.  

“Where are we going?” He asked again.

“The Winchester pilgrimage....I assume Gabriel means Lawerence. All things wind up back there when it comes to you and Dean.”

“Home again, home again,” Sam smiled crookedly.  

There was an old map that Dean kept folded up in their star book. It was a geographical outlay of the USA with it’s useless state lines and more helpful notifications of elevations. Dean had long ago made his own notations, a journal of sorts about temperature, heavy concentrations of spirits, easy places to mine salt. There were chattier fragments as well, places they’d drank something different or met someone interesting. Sometimes they meant nothing at all to Sam, words that resonated with Dean and no one else.

Lawrence had been scrubbed away under a dark black line that drew Sam’s eyes every time they spread it open.

“We’re somewhere here,” Dean laid his thumb at a fold where the Mississippi ran into the Gulf, then turned his hand until his pointer finger landed on Lawrence. “What do you think, Sammy?”

“I’d say about nine hundred miles. Probably a month and a half to travel.”

“Six weeks.” Cas traced the space between Dean’s fingers.

“More like seven or eight. Since one of us will be walking most of the time. Unless we can find a second horse.”

“You know how Baby gets around other horses,” Dean’s eyes went wide. “We can’t do that to her.”

“She gets on fine. You’re the only one who thinks a horse would get jealous.”

“She does! There was that one time-”

“Gabriel will wait,” Cas interrupted. “It will take as long as it takes.”  

They left the beach house, marked on Dean’s map, but Sam didn’t believe for a moment that they’d be back. Dean preferred to go as the land took them. In fact, this pilgrimage was the first time in long memory that they’d had a specific destination. It was strange to go to bed every night with a clear idea of what direction they would head in the morning. Sam found the compass Ellen had given him for a birthday many years ago, held the dial in his hand and checked their path throughout the day. The metal would warm in his palm, comforting and sure. Ellen had been like that. Sam remembered her as a pillar, someone you could build a world on and not see her falter.

She hadn’t been his mother, hadn’t even tried, but she had loved him with a practical forthrightness that stayed with him long past her death.

Her compass, Dad’s horse, Mom’s map, Bobby’s hat on Cas’ head. They made their way home with the markers of their parents carrying them. Sam tried to explain it to Dean and Dean listened with a slight smile, then chucked him on the shoulder.

“It’s us, Sammy. Just our legs and our hands, like usual. Well. ‘Cept there’s Cas too.”  

Cas, who seemed in no kind of hurry now that they knew where they were headed. When it was his turn to walk, he set a slow stride, his eyes on every living thing as if to set them to memory. He prefered not to move in the dark and they made camp earlier and earlier to cater to him.  

“I think I found some quail,” Dean bounded up to Baby, rifle in one hand. “If you and Cas can sit tight here, we can have your favorite for dinner.”

“We just ate lunch,” Sam said, bemused.

“C’mon, Sammy. You haven’t had quail in months.”

“Yeah...”

“Great!” And then Dean was off again.

“We’re not going to make it there by winter at this rate,” Sam slid off of Baby’s back, holding out a hand to steady Cas in his dismount.

“Gabriel will wait,” Cas didn’t release Sam’s hand, the grip solid and dry. “Do you have what you require to cook the birds adequately?”

“Probably,” Sam ran his thumb over Cas’ knuckles. “But we can look for stuff anyway. Always good to stock up.”

They didn’t stray far, but Sam quickly found witchhazel.

“Good for bruises,” He explained. On whim he set a strand of the yellow flowers over Cas’ ear. “Decorative too.”

“Bruises,” Cas repeated, staring down the plant. “Do you use a lot of medicinal herbs?”

“Only the ones that work.”

“Tell me.”

So Sam showed Cas his notes, plants pressed between the pages of Dad’s journal with Sam’s explanations written slantwise next to warnings of extinct creatures like ghouls and werewolves. Witch Hazel, St. John’s Wart, willow bark, clove, thyme, chamomile and feverfew were stored in tiny sachets, the work of saving and drying of years.

Cas looked at them all, repeated their names and their uses.

“Medicine used to be better,” Sam settled each tiny bag back in its place. “Is it better over there?”

“It is still barbaric in some ways, but it is more advanced,” Cas handed Sam back the chamomile. “Antibiotics especially. Though I would guess that you and Dean are more naturally resistant.”

“We had vaccines. Before the world ended. Dean has a few more than me. Still...”

“You’re doing your best,” Cool fingers brushed over Sam’s cheek, a faint smile on Cas’ face. “And your best is very good.”

“Oh,” Sam flushed, tilted his face into the touch.

They returned to their gathering, but Sam’s head wasn’t on herbs anymore. Praise settled warm under his skin and Cas’ particular brand of it was nearly as effective as Dean’s. He was grateful for Dean’s noisy return, the distraction from Cas’ lean form bent among the weeds and grass. Distraction from the tangle of emotion that warned him of waters too deep just ahead.

“Brace of ‘em!” Dean crowed, dangling the line of quails before Sam’s face. “Who’s the king?”

“You’re the king,” Sam rolled his eyes. “Gonna clean ‘em for me, your highness?”

“Might do,” Dean leaned up, stole a kiss then turned to Cas with a contemplative look. “You want to learn how?”

“Of course.”

Cas took well to butchering. Sam watched them work as he built up the fire. It probably said something about the wrongness of his mind that watching them pluck and slice sent flares of lust down his spine.

They ate, drank and Dean made them laugh reenacting his hunt with too broad gestures. When the moon had risen enough to see by, Sam worked his way to Cas’ side and reached a hand to Dean.

That was how they traveled. Slow and impractical, full bullied and lust sated. It was a dizzyingly lovely way to pass the days, even with the end encroaching on them.  

One night as Castiel slept heavy between them, Dean sighed low, “Hey Sammy, remember when you said it wouldn’t break our hearts when he left?”

“I know,” he swallowed hard, reached over Cas to grab up Dean’s hand and press apologetic kisses to his knuckles. “Didn’t mean to make myself a liar.”

But they didn’t turn around or fake being lost. The Winchesters were good at facing up to hard things. They squared their jaws and swallowed down regret like whiskey. When the day eventually came that they reached the outskirts of a burnt town, Sam felt it burn all the way down.

“So where is this guy?” Dean asked, all impatience and nerve as they surveyed what had once, in time out of memory, been home.

“He will make himself known,” Cas frowned. “He has a way of playing tricks.”

They heard it before they saw it. A raucous laugh of a dozen happy voices, carrying blasphemously over the wasted land. Cas didn’t hesitate, plowing into the rubble, following a road long ago gone to seed. More reluctantly, Dean and Sam trailed behind with their fingers on their triggers. Lawrence had burned for a reason after all.

Music, cheerful and obscene, threaded under the busy noise of celebration. The band sounded spritely if a little out of tune.  It led Cas deeper into the labyrinth until he stopped dead.

“There,” he pointed.

And there it was. One intact building among the debris, standing tall and unsinged. A red lantern hung just above the open door.

“Is it real?” Dean whispered.

“As real as Gabriel wishes it to be,” Cas turned back to face them.

If Sam had thought Cas stared a lot before, he had to revise that opinion now. This was a true stare, a devouring, a memorization from their toes to their hair. It was as intimate as a caress.

“Jesus,” Dean grumbled.

Sam stared back. He wanted to remember Cas’ sunburned nose and sandpapered cheeks. He wanted to recall how clothes just never fit quite right on him as if they had been hung instead of worn. He hoped he’d always hold on to the contours of Castiel’s smile.

“The party is inside,” a short man with slicked back hair and ready grin popped into reality beside Cas.

“Brother.”

“Am I?” Gabriel lifted an eyebrow. “All the angels are sealed up in heaven and little sparrow? You’ve got no wings.”

“We were brothers once. In another world, we walked on a shore and you forbade me to step on a very important fish.”

“Did I?” Gabriel’s smirk didn’t dim, giving nothing away.

“You must be very lonely,” the statement stood bold out of Cas’ mouth. The air around Gabriel crackled and snapped, warping in ozone warnings. “Cut off from your family without hope of reconciliation.”

“Because of their parents,” Gabriel tilted his head in Sam and Dean’s direction.

“Because Michael and Lucifer would have brought the world down to settle an argument.”

“Looks like the world went down anyway.”  

“Why do you think that is?” Cas glanced at Dean, silencing a comment or observing? Sam couldn’t tell. “Why do you think that our Father would lay such a booby trap? Heaven is shut closed and he closes down humanity?”

“Why not? Why anything, little one?” Gabriel’s smirk faded at last, along with the push of power. “I’ve stopped trying to make sense of it.”

Sam lost the desire to punch Gabriel all at once.

“Yeah,” Dean also noticeably deflated. “All seems like one big ball of fuck up sometimes, doesn’t it?”

“Most of the time,” Gabriel shrugged. “Come inside for a bit, boys. Rest yourselves.”

The whole building feels solid. The people inside seem real enough though they’re dressed in clothes Sam’s never seen before. The women wear slinky tight dresses and slender deadly heels while the men have boxy suits with pinstripes. There’s a stage with a piano and a woman singing.  

Everyone was smiling.  

“Freaky,” Dean leaned into Sam.

“Yeah, no shit,” Sam gritted out as a woman with long blond hair sent him a sly wink. Her hair was perfect like something out of Jo’s precious brittle magazines.  

“Park it and have a drink on me.” Gabriel gestured at the bartender, who nodded back stiffly. “Cassie and I have some talking to do.”

“We’re not letting-” Dean started, but Gabriel snapped his fingers with a wink. He and Cas disappeared. “Son of a bitch!”

“What will you boys be drinking?” The bartender had a weird accent, falling hard on Sam’s ear.

“What’s the play?” Dean growled.

“No idea. This is way out of our league, man,” Sam searched the crowd, but he didn’t expect to find Gabriel or Cas. “But Cas didn’t look afraid.”

“We’ll have whiskey.” Dean told the bartender.

Neither of them dared drink, but they stayed at the bar. The music was hypnotic, slow and melodic. Sam couldn’t quite make out the words.

“You want some company?” The blond sauntered over. Red lipstick and dark smoky eyes.  

“No,” Dean snapped and she disappeared back into the crowd as if she’s never been.

“I hate this bar,” Sam set the glass back down, wiped his hand off on his pants.

They waited through three long songs, tension ratcheting between them until Sam thought he’d choke on it. The perfume of the women, the smoke from the cigarettes, the rough quality of the liquor built in his sinuses and turned his stomach. Turned and turned and the images started to waver, the people took on an ethereal glow that made his head crack with pain.

“Dean-” Sam reached out, sure that his stomach was going to rebel.

“Sammy!”

And it all stopped. The bar disappeared, the women, the smells, the songs. Sam’s head cleared and his stomach unclenched into peaceful stillness. They weren’t among the rubble of Lawrence any longer.  

It was a marble hall, vaulted glass overhead and two doorways on each side of the corridor. Cas stood before them, cleaner somehow, but still in his borrowed clothes.  

“What the fuck?” Dean spread his hands wide.  

“I believe Gabriel prefers visual metaphors,” Cas grimaced. “I find this one...a little on the nose. But it suffices.”

“Suffices how.”

“Before you stand two doors!” Gabriel stepped out from behind Cas beaming with his own brilliance. “To your left, you will find a broken world full of sorrows and pain and to your right, the world that you boys call home.”  

And there were two doors, both ordinary wood with shining brass knobs.  Sam hadn’t noticed them before.

“So what? Cas just has to go through the left door and he’s home?” Dean edged slightly in front of Sam and Sam let him. “That’s it?”

“That’s not all. There’s a special home edition for you, Winchesters,” Gabriel’s grin turned sharp. “Cas seems to have gotten attached to you, so I thought it’d be a shame if he had to leave you behind.”

“But we already exist there, don’t we?” Sam asked Gabriel, but his eyes were on Cas.

“Always room for more! Lots of people on that side of the void.”  

“Cas?” Dean asked roughly.

“No, no, my little Winchester sausages,” Gabriel slapped a hand over Cas’ mouth. “This is on you. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.”

The word ‘yes’ formed on the tip of Sam’s tongue and froze there. A part of him yearned for the world he’d caught glimpses of. One filled with electronics and cars. Things that would make their lives so much easier. He’d never have to see Dean go thin when there was no ready game and their food ran low. He’d never have to debate building a bigger fire and dealing with the nightmares versus freezing. Never sleep with one eye open in case a predator got wind of easy meat.

Food. Shelter. Saftey.

“It wouldn’t be ours,” Dean glanced up at Sam. And Sam heard ' _He’s not ours'._

“Would’ve been nice though,” Sam put his hand to the small of Dean’s back. Found the strength there to lift a plastered on smile to Gabriel. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“As you say,” Gabriel’s hand dropped from Cas’ mouth. “Sacrificing to the last drop on every plane. This is a time limited offer, kids. I’m going through that door with Cassie and I don’t plan on coming back.”  

Dean squared his shoulders, stuck out his chin,

“We’re good. Thanks.”

“I’ll let you say your goodbyes then. Try not to tear stain the floor.”

Cas moved forward jerkily as if unsure of his welcome until Dean brought him into a hard hug. When they parted even a breath, Dean kissed Cas desperately, impressing himself into Cas’ lips. Then he drew back and stepped aside.  

“I wish our time had not been so short, Sam,” Cas drew close, looking upwards, beseeching him to believe. “I wish...”

“We want you, Cas. Very much,” Sam cupped Cas face, brushed lips over eyelids, nose and mouth. “But they need you.”

“How do you know?”  

“Because I know that I would if I’d had you beside me to lean on for years.”  

Sam kept the kiss soft, kind and brief. He smiled because he remembered wishing his mother would smile at the end. Then he gave Cas a gentle shove toward the left door. Dean’s hands tightened into fists.

“We’ll see you around,” Dean choked out.  

“No,” Gabriel put his fingertips to the doorknob. “You won’t.”

 

_**Epilogue** _

Archangels could be wrong.

Dean and Sam stumbled back into the rubble of Lawrence, disoriented and grieving. Baby waited patiently just where they’d left her and carried them stolidly through the night, far and away from the scene of the crime.

Without a word, they rode north. Away from the memory of ocean and warmth. Sam let Dean lead them towards mountains that broke apart the wide open sky, then east alongside vast lakes that reflected the sky. They avoided towns, scrounged where they could.

They came across a low slung building, not part of a town, living or dead. It looked a little newer around the edges, perhaps built after the end of things to protect some long gone family. There was even some furniture left behind, including a  serviceable mattress on a solid oak bedframe that held them both off the floor without issuing any alarming creaks. Better still, someone had left a bottle of vodka behind, sealed shut and dusty. Dean cracked it open, taking a long gulp before passing it to Sam.

“To Cas,” Dean smiled tightly.

“To Cas,” Sam drank.

When the bottle was half-empty, Dean reached for Sam for the first time in a week. They didn’t bother with anything complicated, rubbing off against each other like horny kids. It was good, itch scratching and cathartic.  

“Let’s stay here awhile.” Dean slurred into Sam’s neck. “Few days. Get our bearings.”

“Yeah, okay.”

There was good hunting in the woods as it turned out and a vegetable garden that had gone wild, but still produced tomatoes, zucchini and mint. Sam took the time to smoke and dry the meat that Dean brought back, preserving it for leaner times ahead. They ate well even with his squirreling away.

“There’s a lake,” Dean said offhandedly one morning. “Want a swim?”

The days were still humid and warm at the height of sun. They walked through the woods, ancient towels slung over their shoulders. The pebbled dirt looked nothing like a sandy shore and the still murky water, nothing like the ocean. Yet Sam couldn’t help, but think of another day, another beach.  

He cajoled Dean deep into the water until he could get Dean’s legs wrapped around his waist. He liked the thick, heavy weight of Dean in his arms without the hard work of supporting all of it.  

“Feeling manly, Sammy?” Dean grinned and for the first time in a long time, it reached his eyes.  

“Yeah, guess so,” Sam nuzzled into Dean’s neck.

The walk back saw them laughing, elbowing at each other and telling bad jokes that should have long ago lost their flavor between them. Dean even started up a second round in the bed after dinner that night that left Sam a panting mess.

“What’s gotten you so riled up?” Sam reached for him, dancing fingers down Dean’s spine.

“Got an idea,” Dean stretched, muscles rippling under Sam’s hand. “Bit crazy.”

“How crazy?”

Dean muttered something into his own arm, the words lost.

“What?” Sam poked him.

“I said,” Dean lifted up enough to free his mouth, “do you want to stay here?”

“I...what? Really?”

“Really, Sammy. I know it’s...it’s not great, but it’s not bad either and probably the best we could ask for.”

“For what? A few months?”

“I don’t know,” Dean shrugged. “Long as we like it.”

“What about what we do? The spirits won’t banish themselves.”

There was a pause, one of those crucial pauses in life. Sam held his breath.

“It hurts you. Seeing those things. Every time. And every time, I wish it was the last time you had to do it,” Dean began slow and then all tumbled out of him as if a dam had broken wide open. “When Gabriel pureed your head, I thought for a minute there you weren’t going to come back. I can’t live like that, Sammy. Not anymore. I don’t want you hurting to save ungrateful strangers. I don’t want you in pain or pretending you aren’t or falling asleep because you’re in too much agony to stay awake. Not for them. Not even for me.”

“They don’t deserve to die.”

“No one does, but everyone has anyway. It’s just killing time until the lights go out now.” Dean cleared his throat. “Guess I’d rather do that alone with you.”

“Oh,” Sam’s eyes burned.

“Yeah.” Dean turned slightly. “So. What do you think?”

“I think,” Sam smiled at the dusty ceiling, “that I want to plant an herb garden.”

It almost didn’t surprise him that that was the night he dreamed of Cas. Even in the dream, the relief loosened the tight knot that Sam had carried in his chest. Whatever else Gabriel could do, he hadn’t broken this last tenuous connection.

 

_It was the bunker again, the same long table and chairs. The other Dean sat in one, body a ratched line of tension as he stared sightlessly at the books before him. Cas had alighted beside him, ill at ease and twitchy. Across from them the other Sam rubbed worried fingers over his brow._

_“Headache?” Dean asked, all wound up concern._

_“Too many hours with tiny font,” The other Sam shrugged. He looked far better, nearly healed, but still haggard and too old to be Sam’s mirror image._

_“I can help,” Cas stood and practically fled the room._

_In his absence, neither brother spoke nor did a page turn. They had both lost themselves in thought as separate as two islands. When Cas returned, they emerged from their isolation to look up in tandem. The too long sleeves of Cas’ sweater (Sam’s sweater, crossed between worlds and frayed a little more at the cuffs) slid back to reveal the mug of tea._

_“Willow bark, mint and ginger,” He set it down at the other Sam’s elbow. Not touching, not quite. “I’ve been told it helps.”_

_“Hot grass water,” Dean smirked. “Your favorite, Sammy.”_

_“Shut up,” The other Sam took up the mug, smiled at Cas. “Thanks, man. But usually painkillers do the trick.”_

_Cas nodded and drifted away. Far enough that Sam thought he could speak to him,_

_“Hey, Cas.”_

_To his credit, Cas didn’t freeze. He faked an interest in the books behind him, turning to where he heard the voice._

_“Sam?” he whispered._

_“Yeah, Cas.”_

_“I’m not sure I made the right decision,” Cas closed his eyes. “I’m useless. Worse. A burden, here.”_

_Sam glanced to the table. The other Sam drank his tea shoulders sagging into relaxation. Dean was boring holes into Cas’ back with a stare, too much emotion to sift through._

_“You’re needed,” Sam assured him. “And loved.”_

_“You can’t know-”_

_“We love you,” he put everything into it, clung to the fading edges of the dream. “You hear me, Cas?”_

_“Yes,” Cas buried his face in his hands. “I hear you. I hear you.”_

"Sammy!"  

“What?” Sam woke instantly, arms tightening around Dean’s waist.  

“Bad dream? You were thrashing. Fire?”

“No. No...” He pulled the blankets further over them. A private cocoon in their little house in the middle of the woods. The home they would finally make together.  

“What about?” Dean grumbled, settling back down.

He meant to tell Dean. It would be honest to describe the lines around Cas’ eyes that hadn’t been there only a few weeks ago, the way his fragile offers of help were accepted with a shrug, and how Sam had been able to get out that last lost message which seemed to do more harm than help. It would be honest, but it would tear at Dean’s insides. It would drive him to do crazy things to bring Cas back, impossible things that would shatter whatever peace they had finally come to.

“It was the past,” he buried his nose in Dean’s hair. “A dead town.”

The starlight couldn’t reach them through the roof, through the blankets, but Sam fell back asleep in the comfort that they were still there. Would always be there, long after every Sam and Dean and Cas had gone to dust.


End file.
